Refugees go home to Mogadishu

A small group of Somali refugees in Eritrea is being voluntarily repatriated to Mogadishu in a UNHCR-chartered aircraft on Wednesday. The 25 families registered to take Wednesday’s flight were among 1,230 Somali refugees who had asked UNHCR to help repatriate them, UNHCR said. “Our policy on Somalia is still far from promoting repatriation, but, since the establishment of the Transitional National Government [TNG] in Mogadishu, more people have said they want to return, and we are able to help them,” UNHCR spokesman Paul Stromberg told IRIN. He said the Somali refugees were a group that had been in Eritrea for about eight years, and UNHCR had planned a number of different flights to return them. According to a UNHCR statement, all the refugees flown to Mogadishu received a cash grant to aid reintegration. It said the TNG had given UNHCR clearance and pledged cooperation for the operation.

Stromberg said Wednesday’s flight followed one previous airlift of 117 Somali refugees from Yemen to Mogadishu in April. Some 2,800 refugees remaining in Yemen were expected to be returned by boat, he said. In addition, around 7,700 Somalis in camps in Kenya had told UNHCR that they would like to be repatriated, mostly to areas of southern Somalia, including the capital, the UNHCR statement said.