Change of plan on refugee relocation

Plans to relocate thousands of Sudanese refugees from an area in western Ethiopia where ethnic clashes killed some 100 people a few months ago have been abandoned, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reported on Tuesday. However, an alternative site is being sought and the relocation should be done by the end of the year, UNHCR said. UNHCR's Mahary Maasho told IRIN that the plan to move 24,500 refugees from Fugnido in Ethiopia's remote Gambella Region to the new site at Odier - about 50 km away - had been scrapped following serious flooding at Odier during heavy rains. "This site had to be abandoned unfortunately," Mahary said. "This was a new site and nobody was able to tell what would happen during the rains." UNHCR had announced plans to move thousands of refugees from Fugnido camp in February after fierce clashes pitted Anuaks against Nuers and Dinkas, both inside the camp and within the Ethiopian host community. Forty-two people were killed in the worst clash, which occurred within the camp in November 2002. At the end of December, over 500 refugees were transported to the Bonga refugee camp, some 160 kilometres northeast of Fugnido. UNHCR had intended turning the site at Odier into a camp for Nuers and Dinkas. Mahary said the agency was still planning to move the refugees from Fugnido by the end of the year, and that surveying work would be completed in October. "The move should happen this year, but this would not be the first time that we faced delays," he said. "There are many actors involved." Fugnido is home to more than 28,700 refugees. It is the largest of five refugee settlements in Gambella, which hosts a total of 85,000 Sudanese.