UNHCR to reconsider refugee status

UNHCR will no longer confer automatic refugee status on Ethiopians who fled their country before 1991 under the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday. Ethiopians in all countries of asylum will be affected, but “UNHCR will assist them if they choose to be repatriated”, UNHCR spokesman in Geneva Ron Redmond said. Those who do not, will be screened and continue to be protected under the refugee law only if they can still claim a valid fear of persecution in Ethiopia. Since the country’s democratic elections in 1995, the government has declared its willingness to welcome home all refugees who fled under the Mengistu regime, and has committed itself to assisting them reintegrate, Redmond said.

In the 1980s, Sudan hosted more than 500,000 Ethiopian refugees, an estimated 12,000 of whom are still living in camps in the eastern part of the country, the agency said. After an information campaign last December, 3,800 of the refugees applied for voluntary repatriation. UNHCR now says the screening process for those who are “reluctant to return” will start in the camps in mid-March “to find alternative solutions in accordance with Sudanese immigration law”. Redmond said a similar exercise was being carried out in Kenya, which hosts some 3,600 Ethiopians who are mainly integrated into urban areas. Almost one million Ethiopians have returned home from Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti and Kenya in the past 10 years, UNHCR said.