Government sets up commission for refugee repatriation

The government of the Central African Republic (CAR) set up a joint government-UN-NGO committee on Wednesday for the repatriation of thousands of the nation's refugees, state-run Radio Centrafrique reported. The committee, known as the Comite National d'Accueil et de Reinsertion des Rapatries, comprises subcommittees to welcome and register returnees, on judicial, security matters and human rights, another in charge of community services, and one for logistics. Committee members will be drawn from the ministries of social affairs, interior, defence, justice, health, education and public works. Others will come from UN agencies, as well as from national and international humanitarian NGOs. "Priority will be accorded to the 2,800 refugees at Zongo who are ready to return home," Mamadou Diane, the protection officer of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the CAR, told IRIN on Wednesday. "The UNHCR will deal with logistics." He said the UNHCR officer at Zongo, a town in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) across from Bangui, the CAR capital, was under pressure from those refugees. He said the UNHCR office in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo (ROC), had registered 250 CAR refugees demanding repatriation, while the one in the northern ROC town of Betou had registered 300. The ROC is home to 1,724 CAR refugees while there are some 3,000 in northern DRC. After the failed 28 May 2001 coup attempt by former president Andre Kolingba, thousands of CAR nationals from his Yakoma ethnic group fled to both Congos. Since Francois Bozize ousted President Ange-Felix Patasse in a coup on 15 March, CAR refugees have been asking to be repatriated. Many of them have returned home without the help of the UNHCR. Diane said that UNHCR and the CAR government had so far registered about 20 returnees, mostly from West Africa. Bozize's amnesty granted to the May 2001 coup plotters is believed to have encouraged refugees to return.