Somali refugees return home from Ethiopia

ADDIS ABABA, Feb 24, 2005 (Xinhua via COMTEX) - Some of the last remaining refugees who fled the civil war in Somalia during the 1990s have begun returning home from Ethiopia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said here Thursday.

According to a press release from the UNHCR country office, 451 refugees were taken in a convoy early this week to the border as they began their return to the self-declared republic of Somaliland.

The refugees were from Aisha refugee camp, located in eastern Ethiopia, which the UNHCR hopes to close by the middle of the year.

Aisha was one of only two camps remaining in Ethiopia for Somali refugees. The few remaining refugees in Aisha, who come from southern Somalia, will most likely be moved to the last camp, Kebribeyah. It is currently home to more than 10,000 refugees who cannot go home to Mogadishu and other areas in southern Somalia because of continuing lawlessness there.

Currently, there are 116,000 refugees in Ethiopia, the majority of whom are from Sudan. The UNHCR has organized the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Ethiopia to Somalia and expects an increase in the coming years.

At present, refugees were returning to only two areas of the country, Somaliland and Puntland, in northwestern and northeastern Somalia, respectively.

The UNHCR has identified Somalia as one of eight countries in Africa where it expects to see significant refugee returns over the next four years if security remains stable and donor countries ensure adequate amounts of rehabilitation and reconstruction assistance.

At one point in the early 1990s, there were eight refugee camps housing 628,000 Somali refugees. Some 400,000 refugees returned home from Ethiopia on their own even before the UNHCR began in 1997 to help refugees return to Somaliland voluntarily.

Some 250,000 have since gone home with the UNHCR assistance and it is expected that by the middle of this year, all refugees from Somaliland will have left Ethiopia.

The UNHCR also gave returnees plastic sheeting, blankets, jerrycans, kerosene stoves and nine months' supply of food to help them reestablish life back home.