First Sudanese refugees from Ethiopia arrive home under UN programme

Seeing the photo in this report of a UNHCR convoy of refugees returning to Sudan yesterday brought tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat.



Photo: First Sudanese refugees from Ethiopia arrive home under UN programme - UNHCR convoy of refugees returning to Sudan (UN)

Slaughtering a white bull and holding prayers at the border, some 500 Sudanese refugees arrived home yesterday in the first such repatriation convoy from Ethiopia under United Nations agreements that eventually aim to bring home the vast majority of the nearly 360,000 Sudanese who fled two decades of civil war.

The return convoy spent three days travelling from Bonga refugee camp in western Ethiopia, spending three nights in way stations built to facilitate operations along the 820-kilometre route, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman William Spindler told a news briefing in Geneva today.

UNHCR supplied all returning refugees with a package of non-food items, including blankets, sleeping mats, plastic sheets, guinea-worm filters, kitchen sets and soap. The standard reintegration assistance, including a food ration planned to last until the returnees get their first harvest, is to be distributed at the dispersal point.

Some 79,000 south Sudanese live in five camps in western Ethiopia – Bonga, Dimma, Fugnido, Sherkole and Yarenja. Most of them arrived in Ethiopia in 1983 and in the 1990s. Full story UN News Centre 4 Apr 2006.