Lubbers to assess repatriation programme

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, is due in Angola this week to assess the refugee agency's repatriation programme. Matthew Brooks, UNHCR spokesman in the capital Luanda, told IRIN on Tuesday that more than 15,000 Angolan refugees had so far been assisted to return home, and Lubbers would be "looking at where things stand, and where things should go from here". The refugees, who fled Angola's three-decade civil war, are returning along four corridors to designated "open areas", where minimum conditions of security and humanitarian access are in place. Two corridors have been established in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to transport returnees home to M'banza Congo in the northern Angolan province of Zaire, and the town of Luau in the far east of the country. From western Zambia, refugees are returning to Cazombo in the eastern province of Moxico, and to Caiundo in the southern province of Kuando Kubango from Namibia. Brooks said UNHCR hoped that in the next two months additional corridors would be opened to take registered returnees from Bas Congo in the DRC to Maquela de Zombo and on to Uige in the north. In the south, Kalai was expected to be an additional destination in Kuando Kubango, across the Kunene river from the Namibian town of Rundu. Over the next two years, UNHCR anticipates that it will assist with the return of 220,000 Angolan refugees. According to government figures, since the end of the civil war in 2002, some 130,000 refugees have returned home under their own steam. More than 400,000 Angolans fled into neighbouring countries during the country's long and bitter conflict.