95,000 Eritreans returning home

An operation began on Tuesday to repatriate 95,000 Eritreans who fled to neighbouring Sudan when the Ethiopian-Eritrean border war flared up again in May this year. A UNHCR spokeswoman in Asmara, Simone Wolken, told IRIN that the first trucks had been sent on Tuesday morning to eastern Sudan, and that refugees would be brought to reception centres in Tesseney, western Eritrea. In a tripartite meeting on 14 July between UNHCR, the Eritrean and Sudanese governments, representatives decided to return the refugees as soon as possible because rains had started in the western Eritrean lowlands and eastern Sudan. She said: “A lot of these refugees are farmers and want to get back to their fields and homes as soon as possible to plant and rebuild their lives”. Western Eritrea is the main agriculture-producing area of the country. Representatives from the Eritrean Relief and Refugee Emergency Commission (ERREC) and UNHCR visited camps in eastern Sudan on Thursday to inform refugees of the planned repatriation, and found the homeless Eritreans “very enthusiastic to return”, said Wolken. Over 13,000 signed up from Lafa and Gulsa camps for immediate repatriation, and a further 20,000 have signed up in the last 48 hours, she told IRIN. Some areas in Western Eritrea are still occupied by Ethiopian troops, preventing complete repatriation. Refugees and humanitarian staff are being advised by field staff on safety measures, including “mine awareness”. Humanitarian sources told IRIN that refugees were being repatriated to safe areas only, and they were cautioned not to move in areas where there may be unexploded ordinance. Both Ethiopia and Eritrea laid landmines during the conflict. UNHCR still has an older caseload of some 160,000 Eritrean refugees in eastern Sudan who fled during Eritreas war of independence, before 1991. Plans to begin voluntary repatriation of the pre-independence refugees in May were scuttled when conflict broke out again between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Wolken said the pre-independence refugees remain “very much on the agenda” but their situation is very different: “These people will have to start from scratch while the others still have their fields and houses to return to”. She said repatriation for the pre-independence refugees would probably be planned after the rainy season, and after repatriation of the new refugees.