UN agency trains police officers on refugee rights

Some 50 police officers in the Central African Republic completed a two-day training course on Friday on refugee rights and obligations, conducted by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "This seminar aimed at providing the services in charge of refugees with international instruments governing refugees for their better and more efficient management," Emile Segbor, the UNHCR representative for CAR and Chad, said during the closing ceremony in the capital, Bangui. The UNCHR protection officer, Mamadou Diane, conducted the training for the police officers who included one woman. Segbor said a similar seminar was held in early October for private and state communicators. "It was the first time that I was instructed about refugees' rights and obligations," Vincent Alandala, an inspector in Urban Security Police in Bangui, told IRIN. He said that he had previously considered refugees as ordinary foreigners. "Now I know what attitude to adopt when dealing with a refugee," Alandala he said, and urged the UNHCR to extend the training to all the 1,648 policemen in Bangui. Closing the seminar, the minister for pubic security, Paulin Bondeboli, said the training would contribute to the improvement of refugees' conditions in the country. He urged the police officers to harmonise the instructions they had received with laws in force in the country. He asked the UNHCR to organise more seminars for the police. The UNHCR training for communicators and police officers came after refugees from Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo got into trouble with the police following newspapers reports that refugees had been recruited among mercenaries. The secretary-general of the National Commission for Refugees, Victor Bead, told IRIN on Friday that the country had 37,000 refugees from Sudan, 7,000 from the DRC, 243 from Rwanda, 160 from Burundi, 15 from Liberia, six from Uganda and three from Angola.