UN refugee agency prepares to repatriate 90,000 Congolese

Preparations are under way to repatriate in July some 90,000 nationals of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who have sought refuge in two neighbouring countries, an official of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Monday.

"They will be returned to Equateur Province, in northwestern DRC, where the security is relatively calm: a factor that is encouraging the refugees to return," David Kapya, the agency's representative in the DRC, said in the DRC capital, Kinshasa.

He added that 10,000 of the refugees would be repatriated from Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, and the rest from the Republic of Congo. The refugees had fled because of fighting in the DRC since 1998.

Kapya said the UNHCR had prepared two corridors for the repatriation of the Congolese from these two countries. "We could complete the return of Congolese refugees from the Central African Republic before the end of the year, to be followed by those from the Republic of Congo by June next year," Kapya said.

He said the cantonment of former rebel troops of the Mouvement de liberation du Congo had been a major factor encouraging the refugees to return, despite some disturbances in the cantonment sites.

There are tens of thousands other Congolese refugees in neighbouring countries whom the UNHCR is not yet encouraging to return home, due to the less stable security situation in the east of the DRC.

In the eastern province of South Kivu, the DRC army has been battling Hutu rebels of the Forces democratiques pour la liberation du Rwanda (FDLR); and in the north of Katanga Province, Mayi-Mayi militia fighters have been fighting elements of the former Congolese army.

Despite this fighting, there had been spontaneous returns of Congolese refugees. UNHCR said 1,364 had returned from Burundi in April and had settled in Muturule, 88 km from Bukavu, the main town in South Kivu. Another 974 from Burundi were in a site in Luberizi, and close to another 50 at Luvungi, to the south of Bukavu.

UNHCR reported that according to local Red Cross officials, in the town of Fizi in the southern part of South Kivu, some 16,000 spontaneous returnees from Tanzania have been there for one year, and 2,400 others who came from Burundi in 2002 had gone to Fizi and Uvira. UNHCR said there were another 200 returnees from Tanzania at Kalemi, in the northeast of Katanga Province.

Tanzania hosts the largest number of Congolese refugees: 140,000, of whom 80 percent are residents of the Kivus. Burundi was hosting another 35,000 and Rwanda 33,000, UNHCR reported.