UNCHR starts visiting sites

A UNHCR emergency team in northeastern DRC began visiting sites for the possible transfer of nearly 15,000 Central African Republic (CAR) refugees from the small town of Zongo, a UNCHR update said. There have been growing concerns by local DRC authorities about the presence of several hundred CAR soldiers among the refugees encamped in schools, churches and other public buildings in the town. Authorities were also worried that the refugees were living too close to the CAR which they fled in June citing fears of safety. Zongo, previously a town of 40,000, is about five minutes by motorboat from CAR capital, Bangui across the Oubangui river.

In meetings with DRC officials early last week, UNHCR explained that it could only arrange the transfer of civilian refugees from the town. On Wednesday, a UNHCR team visited a site at a location called Wenze, some 17 km from Zongo, which has been proposed by local authorities for the transfer of refugees, the statement said. Many of the 25,000 refugees who fled to northeastern DRC in June in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt in CAR, are from localities southwest of Bangui. They fled with a few belongings and have been living among the local population in and around Zongo in “extremely difficult conditions”, UNHCR said. The agency said that small numbers of CAR refugees had begun to move away from the DRC border areas and are trickling into the Republic of Congo (ROC) where there are already some 1,600 new refugees in the capital Brazzaville and in the towns of Betou and Impfondo, both on the Oubangui river.