Reception areas to close in December

The Angolan government aims to move all former UNITA rebels and their families out of reception areas and into a new phase of resettlement by the end of the year, a senior official told IRIN. "I believe in the shortest possible time the people will leave the [reception] areas, but the challenge remains to create the conditions where they will be received," said Jose Antonio Martins, principal adviser to the minister of social affairs and reintegration. "Our main concern is the [resettlement] process is going slowly and we risk losing the agricultural year, at the moment we should already be planting." There was confusion last month when Huambo provincial authorities said they would close their reception camps in the central highlands by 15 October, a move which the government later said was unauthorised. Last week, all provincial governors met in the capital Luanda to agree a strategy for the next stage of the peace process, the resettlement of the 80,000 UNITA ex-soldiers and their more than 300,000 family members under the terms of the April ceasefire. Speaking to IRIN while visiting South Africa last week, Martins said access to land was central to the reintegration process. All former combatants would be given the equivalent of US $100 and start-up packs of basic items including blankets, seeds and tools, while the government would try and find suitable land for their resettlement. There would be "a degree of choice" where UNITA members would be allowed to settle, but Martins added that one of the government's goals was their dispersal to avoid areas of the country being associated with UNITA. Neither would the ex-fighters be encouraged to stay in the camps after they closed, to prevent "a concentration of former military that could be used for other purposes". The ministerial advisor stressed that government assistance would go not just to the former rebels and their families, but also the communities into which they would be absorbed, in order to avoid friction. The government planned to use some ex-combatants in construction brigades and as part of demining teams, but he did not foresee UNITA fighters harbouring any grander expectations. "The people who remain in the camps are low-ranking officers without an academic background or soldiers, and their expectation is to return to an agricultural life. I don't think their expectations will be any more serious than that, what's important is to give them land," Martins noted. The World Bank is to provide Angola with US $100 million over three years to help with the reintegration programme, said Martins. But central to the government's long-term plans for the country's rehabilitation is a donor conference planned for the end of the year, where Angola will ask for US $1.3 billion in aid. "The money can appear if the government guarantees three components - good governance, transparency and the equitable distribution of the national budget [to provide more resources to the social sector]," Martins said. "We are already working with the donors to arrive at the conference with an agreed document."