UNHCR to send emergency relief mission

UNHCR said on Tuesday it was sending an emergency relief mission to Angola this week because it had found internally displaced people living in inhuman conditions in the war-torn country’s northern provinces.

“During a trip to Angola’s Uige, Zaire and Luanda provinces in April, UNHCR workers found internally displaced people and returnees living in appalling and life-threatening conditions,” spokesman Kris Janowski told IRIN.

“They said the situation was particularly alarming in the northern provinces of Uige and Zaire. They cited severe malnutrition among children, rising mortality rates of malaria, respiratory infections and tuberculosis, as well as hopeless overcrowding. The team said the people needed virtually everything from food and clean water to medicine and basic sanitary installations,” he said.

Twelve senior UNHCR staff “with solid emergency relief experience” arriving in Luanda this week would split up, with some going immediately to the town of Uige, in Angola’s northwestern Uige province, where displaced people are reported to be living in abominable conditions, Janowski said.

The others would remain in Luanda to provide back-up for the field operation which later in the year would be expanded with the re-opening of UNHCR field offices in Mbanza Congo in the Zaire province and Maquella do Zombo in the extreme north of the Uige province.

“UNHCR had been present in the north of Angola until 1998 to help Angolans repatriate after the 1996 peace agreement between the government and UNITA raised some hope of stability,” he said. “But the resumption of civil war in 1998 brought the repatriation to a halt and forced UNHCR to phase out its presence in the north.”

Janowski said UNHCR’s involvement will focus not only on relief aid, but also on trying to address protection issues such as forced relocation, forcible enlistment and other human rights abuses which lead to further displacement in Angola.