Camp for Somali refugees to be closed

An Ethiopian camp for Somali refugees - once the largest of its kind in the world - will close by the end of the year, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It said in a statement on Friday that the closure of Hartishek camp, located in a semiarid area near the border with Somalia – would bring to an end "one of world's most tragic refugee cases". Some 600,000 Somalis poured into the camp from 1988 onwards, continuing after the collapse of the Muhammad Siyad Barre government in Somalia in 1991 and the inter-clan wars which then ensued. "Many died of exhaustion, hunger and lack of water," UNHCR said. "Relief workers at that time said the Somalis were dying like flies upon reaching Ethiopia." Coincidentally with the arrival of the refugees, UNHCR set up camps, dug wells and provided health care. The most serious problem proved to be supplying sufficient water. "One of the major problems in Hartishek and its adjacent camps has been a lack of water," UNHCR said in the statement. "Water supplies that were brought in by tankers several kilometres away did not adequately meet the needs of refugees." In recent years, UNHCR has been repatriating Somalis from Hartishek, particularly to the self-declared Republic of Somaliland in northwestern Somalia, where relative calm prevails. It has also organised the repatriation to Somalia of hundreds of thousands of refugees from other camps in Ethiopia. Many Somali refugees had also returned home on their own, UNHCR said. On Thursday a convoy of 205 Somalis set out for northwestern Somalia under the voluntary repatriation scheme the UN refugee agency hopes to complete by December. Many of the remaining Somalis have turned in their ration cards in exchange for a repatriation grant of US $40 and food supplies in readiness for their return home. Some 2,500 refugees are left in the camp, a UNHCR source told IRIN. They include about 1,700 refugees who wish to return to Hargeysa, capital of breakaway Somaliland, and some 600 from areas in war-torn southern Somalia which remain too unsafe for returnees. These are to be interviewed in November before being transferred to other sites in Ethiopia.