Aid groups call for increased aid to returnees

Unless the government of Angola and the donor community provide increased aid to people returning to their areas of origin, the country could be faced with yet another humanitarian emergency, Refugees International (RI) said on Tuesday. It is estimated that 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 100,000 refugees have returned home since the end of the civil war last year, many to areas lacking basic infrastructure. "Refugees are finding it difficult to survive back home, where food, security and health care are so limited that people struggling to achieve self-sufficiency find themselves once again in an emergency situation," RI noted. Last month, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that 15 returnee areas showed alarming rates of malnutrition, mostly in the central highlands, where the majority of IDPs are returning. "The returnees are often in an extremely vulnerable condition. Most of them have been totally dependent on food aid in the gathering areas and when they return to their areas of origin they don't have the necessary coping mechanisms to survive. So we are seeing in some parts alarming rates of malnourishment," Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Belgium head of mission, Fasil Tezera, told IRIN. He added that the lack of healthcare and essential drugs had contributed to the increase in morbidity and mortality rates from treatable illnesses such malaria and respiratory infections. "There are no government health professionals or basic medicines available in any of the returnee sites. And in places where there are clinics, people don't have the funds to pay for services," Tezera said. RI noted that farmers have complained that they could not start farming because they had missed distributions of seeds and tools, while traction power was in short supply. In a recent report, CARE International noted that many IDPs were returning to areas where the economy had collapsed as a result of three decades of civil war. CARE said that although rural markets could gradually revive in isolated areas, it was unlikely that commercially traded basic staples would reach those regions in the near future. "Even if food becomes available on local markets, most households will have insufficient buying power to acquire it. Food security will continue to be a serious concern through 2003," CARE said. The lack of security was another concern for returnees. RI warned that there were reports of former army soldiers intimidating their neighbours and stealing what little food they had. The NGO urged the government to increase security by establishing trained municipal-level police officers to address ongoing problems of insecurity and called for the authorities to expand basic survival services in return sites, including seeds, tools and food distributions. The UN has said that conditions in areas of return vary widely and 70 percent of people returned home without any form of assistance from the government.