Biggest convoy of returning refugees this year

After more than 30 years in exile, an estimated 1,700 Eritrean refugees left their camps in eastern Sudan to return home to Eritrea this week, in the biggest return convoy this year. On Wednesday, a convoy of 58 passenger buses and more than 30 luggage trucks carrying 1,770 refugees and their belongings crossed into Eritrea under the escort of officials from Sudan and the UN refugee agency (UNHCR). At a desolate border crossing inside Eritrea, known as Check Point 14, the returnees were transferred to Eritrean vehicles and taken to the western town of Tesseney, where they were issued with assistance packages and new ID cards, pending their onward journey to their home areas. The convoy was the fourth out of 25 return movements planned up to the end of June. So far, more than 118,000 refugees have returned home under the programme - which started in 2000 - including more than 3,200 this year. The repatriation has enabled UNHCR to close 10 of the 18 original camps established decades ago on the plains of eastern Sudan. Further convoys should enable the agency to close four more camps by May, and then consolidate the remaining Eritreans at Um Gargor and Kilo-26 camps in Gedaref and Kassala states, respectively. In February 2002, the UN refugee agency announced that Eritreans would lose their refugee status after 31 December 31 2002, because the reasons for them fleeing Eritrea – the war of liberation which ended in 1993 and the more recent border conflict with Ethiopia which ended in 2000 – were no longer relevant. Eritrea is one of several countries that has been chosen for UNHCR's pilot testing of a new initiative dubbed the 4Rs – Repatriation, Reintegration, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction – which is already being tested in Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. The 4Rs project aims to ensure that the return of the refugees and their reintegration is backed by "solid rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes", UNHCR reported. The Sudanese government estimates the total number of Eritreans remaining in Sudan to be over 200,000. About 35,000 people have signed up for voluntary repatriation to Eritrea this year, while over 29,000 families have applied to remain in Sudan as refugees.