Refugee agreement to be signed with Pretoria

A voluntary repatriation agreement for Angolan refugees in South Africa will be signed in Pretoria on Sunday, allowing the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, to prepare for the 13,000-strong community to return home.

South Africa becomes the sixth and last country in the region to sign a tripartite agreement with the Angolan government and UNHCR. It joins Africa's largest repatriation programme, which aims to return 450,000 Angolans who had fled the country's civil war by 2005.

But the refugee population in South Africa presents a challenge, UNHCR Special Envoy for Angolan Repatriation, Kallu Kalumiya, told IRIN. The majority are young, male and relatively well educated, and may not rush to take advantage of organised repatriation.

Kalumiya said the signing of the tripartite agreement would not mean the refugees automatically lost their right to asylum. UNHCR would first have to conclude that conditions in Angola had improved significantly, which would probably not be until after free and fair elections were held in 2005.

With UNHCR's assistance, 45,000 Angolans have been repatriated since June 2003. A further 25,000 have made it home under their own steam, receiving assistance inside Angola from UNHCR and the World Food Programme. Before UNHCR began its repatriation programme, 80,000 to 100,000 refugees had trekked home since the war ended in 2002.

"Next year will be the make or break year in terms of numbers. Now that procedures and systems are in place, we want to repatriate 140,000 Angolans voluntarily. Most of the camps will begin to empty, and we will round off the process in 2005," Kalumiya said.

Although acknowledging that significant problems remained for returning refugees - from the presence of an estimated 10 million land mines, to the lack of social services and weak government structures - "the fundamentals for a successful repatriation are present," he said.

These include a durable peace process - with the exception of fighting in the oil-rich Cabinda enclave - a "dramatic improvement in the humanitarian situation", and an "equally impressive improvement in human rights conditions".

"Life is gradually returning to the countryside - Angola is literally a country on the move," Kalumiya noted.

The vast majority of Angolan refugees, some 400,000, had fled to Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to escape the almost three decade-long civil war.