Security a precondition for resettlement

Minimum standards of security are a precondition for the resettlement of Angolans displaced by the country’s civil war, UN humanitarian sources said on Tuesday in response to concerns voiced by the international medical relief organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF last week expressed “deep concern” over the security and health of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Angola and in a statement released ahead of a UN Security Council open debate on Angola called on the Angolan government “to uphold its responsibility to protect the population.” The relief agency charged that despite increasing insecurity in the countryside: “The Angolan authorities, backed by members of the international community and the UN, have undertaken a plan to return IDPs to their home villages or to other locations. MSF believes that any relocation must ensure that basic minimum standards are in place prior to the movement of the population. In particular, any return of displaced persons must be voluntary.” But a UN humanitarian source told IRIN that “MSF has got it slightly wrong. All UN agencies maintain that there has to be minimum operating standards for resettlement.” There are an estimated 2.65 million IDPs in Angola, 562,000 of them in camps and transit centres, according to the United Nations latest figures. “There has been some resettlement but not a mass exodus. It’s a slow process and people are still coming into the towns,” the humanitarian official said. He acknowledged that “there have been problems relating to provincial governments regarding voluntary versus involuntary resettlement”, but UN agencies had drawn the attention of the authorities to the problem when it occurred. The MSF statement said incidents of mine accidents and other war-related wounds indicated that civilian populations outside of city centres continued to be affected by the ongoing conflict. In the central highland city of Kuito, MSF surgeons conducted over 23 mine-related amputations in the first three months of 2000. In all of 1999, the total figure of amputations at the same hospital was 35. Cuts in food distributions by the World Food Program (WFP) as a result of a funding shortfall could mean that IDPs are forced “to venture out of the town centres in search of food, jeopardizing their safety. In Luena, for example, the number of beneficiaries previously receiving food distributions dropped from 67,000 persons to 17,000 persons. While the general nutritional situation has somewhat stabilised due to the harvest, MSF is worried about the consequences of such a reduction.” “People should not have to decide on whether to relocate based on an empty stomach,” Felicitas Ibanez-Llado, MSF Head of Mission in Angola said in the statement. “People are fleeing rural areas to seek safety in the town centres and should not be forced to move back to an insecure area because they are not receiving enough food.”