The European Commission says it has decided to finance, via its humanitarian office, ECHO, the digging of a permanent well to provide potable water at a resettlement site in northern Mali for a group of more than 1,000 returning Tuareg refugees.
The EC said in a 30 December communique that the returnees were on their way to Mali, and that they were members of the Kel Essouk Tuareg clan who had fled to Niger to escape attacks against them in 1994, during the Tuareg rebellion.
The well is to be dug by the Spanish chapter of the non-governmental organisation, Action Contre la Faim, which has been one of ECHO’s partners in northern Mali for many years, according to the communique.
It said the EU had financed humanitarian operations to the sum of 14.6 million euros for populations affected by the rebel war in northern Mali in the 1990s.
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