First UNHCR repatriation planned

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Saturday it would carry out its first repatriation of Iraqi refugees in about a week’s time. More than 450 refugees currently living in the Rafha refugee camp in Saudi Arabia will cross the border in a convoy of buses on their way home to the southern city of Basra. The refugees are among more than 30,000 Iraqis, many of them army deserters, who fled after the 1991 Gulf War and ended up at the camp. The majority have found refuge abroad - but more than 5,000 who remain in the desert camp have no prospect of going elsewhere. "We chose this group because they are very, very anxious to go home, and ever since the fall of the regime they have been staging demonstrations in front of the office," Melita Sunjic, UNHCR spokeswoman for Iraq, told IRIN from Baghdad. The refugees’ camp is said to be comfortable, but their movement is restricted. Those who are returning have already been in touch with their families back home. "We know they have places to go so they will not cause any new displacement problems when they arrive," Sunjic said. She added that UNHCR was satisfied with the security situation and believed there was no imminent threat to the returnees back home. However, she said UNHCR would monitor them for a while once they went back. The returning refugees would travel by bus overnight to avoid soaring daytime temperatures. UNHCR hopes to send groups of returnees from the camp every week or two after that, on condition that the security situation allows it, they can be absorbed by the community and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) agrees. At the same time, UNHCR says it will start helping a few hundred Iraqi refugees in Iran to return - and Iranian refugees in Iraq to go the other way. "Quite a few want to come back. However, we are not promoting repatriation at this stage because of security and the absorption capacity," Sunjic said. UNHCR believes there are half a million Iraqi refugees, asylum seekers or people in refugee-like situations who could eventually return home. However, UNHCR officials say that given the current situation in Iraq, large-scale returns will not take place until next year.