Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees ends tour

More needs to be done to enable refugees to make informed choices on whether they wish to stay in countries of asylum, return home or resettle in third countries, Deputy UN High Commissioner for Refugees Frederick Barton told IRIN. Barton was speaking at the end of a 10-day mission to Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire, his first since taking up his post at the end of August. Places he visited included Zwedru in Grand Gedeh County in eastern Liberia, some 25 km from the Ivoirian border, and Nicla in Guiglo prefecture, western Cote d’Ivoire. Nicla, which is some 30 km from the border, hosts just over 10,000 Liberian refugees, many of whom come from Grand Gedeh. “We need to encourage people to move back and forth across the border so that they can make their own decisions,” Barton told IRIN. “There currently seems to be a disconnect between Zwedru and Guiglo.” He said he was encouraged by activities in Zwedru such as school rehabilitation, vocational programmes and microcredit schemes and that Zwedru was a model for other areas for refugee return. Some 336,000 Liberians refugees have been repatriated since May 1997, 121,000 with help from UNHCR. This leaves some 144,000 still in the region, mainly in Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea. UNHCR’s “organised mass repatriation programme” for Liberians is scheduled to end in December.