Some refugees return, but 19,000 remain

While some of the refugees who streamed across the border from Togo into Benin by the thousands last April have finally gone home, more than 19,000 are still in exile, according to the UN refugee agency. The UNHCR, which is updating data on the refugee situation in Benin, said 10,960 people were registered in its Come and Agame refugee camps, while 8,130 refugees from this year’s eruption of political tension in Togo were living in the capital Cotonou, or elsewhere in the country. The agency estimated last August that a total 24,500 refugees had fled east from Togo into Benin following unrest triggered by a disputed presidential poll on 24 April. A further 15,000 went west into Ghana. The government of newly-elected President Faure Gnassingbe has repeatedly called on the refugees to return in the name of national reconciliation. Floods of people thronged across the tiny country’s borders late April as violence degenerated into urban warfare in the capital, Lome, when Gnassingbe was declared winner of a poll the opposition claimed was rigged. Opposition protesters, angered to see Gnassingbe step into the post held for 38 years by his father Gnassingbe Eyadema, until he died last February, fled Togo in fear of persecution as security forces stepped in to restore calm. A government inquiry last month said 154 people had been killed and more than 600 hurt in the violence while the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said 400 to 500 people had died. Many refugees have said they fear persecution should they return. At Come camp, UNHCR official Van Casteele said there had been no new arrivals for the past two months and that most of the 239 unaccompanied minors originally registered had now been reunited with their families. Only 54 children were still living alone at Come, he said. Van Casteele said the agency, with the help of the Beninese authorities, was currently working on updating registration in line with its Project Profile, which offers each refugee a certificate as well as a falsification-proof ID card, with phototgraph and fingerprint. The registration method is used in 40 countries. A spokesman for the refugees at Come, Imorou Kossi, told journalists visiting the camp that its residents continued to fear for their safety and complained of inadequate food and health care. The agency had just bought an ambulance for the camp and had reimbursed the cost of medical care to local communities, who are shouldering some of the burden of the displaced, UNHCR said. A team from the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres was expected in January. As for food, the UNHCR says the refugees are receiving the required 2,100 calories a day but that some are used to eating greater quantities of food. UN food agency, the World Food Programme (WFP), meanwhile urged donors to contribute cash needed to feed the refugees until March 2006. “Every refugee in the camps has been receiving a full ration of food on a monthly basis,” WFP’s Spokesman for West Africa, Marcus Prior, told IRIN. “The fact that some appear to be dissatisfied only underlines just how difficult life as a refugee is, even when you are receiving assistance,” he said. Despite a big contribution from Norway to its appeal for US $3 million, almost a million dollars were still required to meet food needs until next March, he said. WFP is supplying food aid not only to the refugees in the Benin Camps but also to thousands who fled to Ghana or who were displaced within Togo.