UNHCR considers re-opening Yaounde office

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced on Friday that it would consider re-opening its Cameroon office which was closed in December 2001 due to budgetary constraints. The head of UNHCR's West and Central Africa office, Bah Thierno Oumar, told a news conference in the capital, Yaounde, that the UN agency had agreed in principle to examine the conditions under which the office could operate again. "As a priority, we wanted to go where there were new emergencies" Bah said, citing Afghanistan, the Great Lakes region and West Africa as areas where the refugee agency needed to reinforce its operations. UNHCR is reconsidering its decision because Cameroon has a large refugee population and asylum seekers and also because the government of Cameroon told the agency that its presence was necessary, he added. Despite voluntary repatriation programmes, Cameroon hosts over 45,000 refugees, the vast majority of them from neighbouring Chad. In recent weeks, some 20,000 Nigerians, fleeing ethnic fighting in Taraba State, have also crossed into Cameroon in search of asylum. Last week, Bah visited Sabongari, a village in the North-West province close to Nigeria, where some of the newly arrived live. He also met with other operational partners, as well as with Nigeria's high commissioner in Cameroon, Njiwah Emmanuel, to discuss ways to encourage the new arrivals to return home to Nigeria. The closure of the Yaounde office, which was part of a wave of UNHCR office closures in West and Central Africa, sparked off concern from the Cameroonian authorities and the refugees themselves.