Help needed for returnees to Casamance

Up to 15,000 displaced people are expected to return to their home villages in Senegal's southern Casamance province this year as a low-level insurgency that has gone on for two decades peters out, but little is being done by the international community to assist them, Refugees International said on Friday. The New York-base pressure group said over 50,000 people had been displaced from their homes as a result of a rebellion by separatist guerillas in the narrrow strip of swampy forested land bounded to the north by Gambia and to the south by Guinea-Bissau. Refugees International said in a statement that the Association of Young Farmers in Casamance (AJAC APREN) expected 10,000 to 15,000 displaced people to return to their home villages in 2004. This movement would be prompted by the death in May 2003 of Sidi Badji, a hardline guerrilla leader opposed to any deal with the Senegal government and by a conference of the separatist Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MDFC) in October which called for a peace settlement with the authorities in Dakar. "To consolidate the peace and avoid unnecessary suffering as the displaced return to their homes, international donors, UNHCR and the Senegalese government must provide immediate resettlement assistance to returning populations in Casamance," Refugees International said. "Families of 12-24 people are arriving in their home villages only to find the burned remains of their houses, schools and health centres. Their land, once rich for cultivating crops, is now overgrown forest needing clearing for farming." The organisation expressed particular concern about the hazards posed by landmines. It quoted Handicap International as saying in December that every week it found one person and 20 head of cattle killed by landmines in Casamance. Refugees International said the number of people displaced by the conflict, which began in 1983, was uncertain. But it quoted AJAC APREN as estimating that 40,000 people from Casamance were internally displaced within Senegal. The US Committee for Refugees had meanwhile reported that there 6,000 refugees from Casamance in Guinea-Bissau and a further 5,000 in the Gambia, it noted. Refugees International said USAID had funded a US$12 million three-year pilot programme to help displaced people in Casamance, but this had recently come to an end after managing to meet less than half the needs of its target population.