Achol-Pii refugee relocation in progress

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is finalising plans to relocate about 24,000 Sudanese refugees who recently fled an attack by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda, to a permanent new camp in the west sometime this week, the refugee agency has said. UNHCR announced in a statement on 16 August that it was sending four international emergency staff members to Uganda to supervise the final phase of relocating the refugees who survived the 5 August attack on the Acholi-Pii camp in Pader District, in which about 60 people were killed. The last phase of the relocation involves the transfer of the refugees from Kiryondongo in Masindi District, central Uganda, to Kyangwali, situated on the shores Lake Albert, in Hoima District. Bushra Malik, the UNHCR public information officer for Uganda, told IRIN on Monday that the four would join the emergency response team dealing with the situation and had been brought in to boost the efforts being made by existing UNHCR staff. She said the team was currently receiving briefings. "There were plans to start the process this week, but I can't give you the details," Malik said. During the first phase of the relocation, about 17,000 of the displaced refugees trekked overnight from Rachkoko, near Acholi-Pii, to Lira, where thousands more had gathered, according to the UNHCR statement. The second phase involved transporting them by truck from Lira to Kiryondongo, where they were currently temporarily camped awaiting their final relocation. At Kiryondongo, the new arrivals received domestic items and blankets at a makeshift reception centre. A registration, jointly organised by UNHCR and the World Food Programme, is also under way to ascertain the exact number of refugees in Kiryondongo, and possibly to single out internally displaced people who may have fled the attack together with the refugees, according to UNHCR. Meanwhile, UNHCR staff are organising a fleet of 10 UNHCR/International Organisation for Migration trucks and 50 hired trucks. "With one trip per day carrying 60 passengers per truck each time, the transfer is expected to be completed within six days. The six-hour journey will include a stopover after Hoima, the district capital. Refugees will receive food and water at the stopover, which could also accommodate them overnight should the trucks break down," UNHCR said in the statement. Preparations are also going ahead swiftly in Kyanwali, where four reception centres are being set up, and the emergency team is surveying land and demarcating plots for shelter and farming, according to the statement.