Refugees repatriated from eastern Ethiopia

At least two thousand Somali refugees have been repatriated from Ethiopia by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as part of a wider plan to return 35,000 Somali refugees to various parts of their country this year, UNHCR said. The repatriated refugees, from the Aisha camp, were returned to the Awdal District of northwest Somalia last week aboard trucks and buses, the UNHCR spokesman, Kris Janowski, said in Geneva on Tuesday. It was expected that the camp could be closed by September, he added. "UNHCR plans two voluntary repatriation convoys each month from Aisha, and believes that all the camp's residents will be gone by September," Janowski said. "We will then close Aisha, which was created 16 years ago following a massive refugee influx that saw more than 400,000 Somalis crowd into neighbouring Hartisheik camp." The returnees would join some 670,000 former refugees who had gone back to northwestern Somalia over the last 13 years, either on their own or with UNHCR assistance. Janowski said UNHCR had identified Somalia as one of eight countries in Africa where it expected to see significant refugee returns over the next five years, if security remained stable and donor countries ensured adequate amounts of rehabilitation and reconstruction assistance. He added that a UNHCR-funded road crew had repaired roads and checked the area for landmines before the refugees were returned.