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Refugees home by July

Nearly 11,000 Eritrean refugees have registered for repatriation from Sudan in the last week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday. The UN agency said it was planning to return 62,000 refugees to their homes from Sudanese border camps by the end of July. Many of those who have registered are keen to be repatriated before the rainy season begins, UNHCR said.

UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said that some of the refugees had spent more than thirty years in exile in Sudan, having fled Ethiopia as early as 1967. Janowski said that 2,300 refugees were registering for the second time after a repatriation planned for last year was suspended due to renewed fighting between Ethiopia and Eritrea. There are about 174,000 Eritrean refugees in Sudanese refugee camps, and it is expected that the remainder will return home during 2002, he said.


This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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