UNHCR moves 4,000 Casamance refugees

Some 4,000 refugees in The Gambia who fled fighting in Senegal’s Casamance region have been moved since May from two border camps to the interior, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Banjul reported on Monday.

UNHCR officials told IRIN the refugees in the camps of Sifo and Arankol were moved because of recent fighting in the Casamance region, which is seeking independence from Senegal, and fears that the fighting could spill across the border into the refugee camps.

“The fighting has been very serious,” an UNHCR spokesperson told IRIN. All those who accepted the option to move, given them by the Gambian government and UNHCR, were relocated between May and June, the official said. “Those who didn’t want to move, about 200 of them, were asked by the government to go home.”

UNHCR said some of those who chose to go home had been alleging they were expelled by the government of The Gambia.

“There was no question of expulsion,” the official said.

Early in June, the UNHCR said hundreds of refugees fled from Casamance to The Gambia because of heavy fighting between the Senegalese army and the Mouvement des forces democratique de Casamance (MFDC). The MFDC has been spearheading the fight for independence for the region separated by The Gambia from the rest of Senegal to the north.

The fighting prompted The Gambia to move the refugees, with the help of UNHCR, mostly to the Kwinella Transit camp, 70 km north of the border. The UNHCR cares for some 12,400 refugees, most of them from the Casamance.