ICRC repatriates 219 Ethiopians

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has repatriated 219 Ethiopians from Eritrea, the agency said, adding that the returnees arrived in their home country on 27 August after crossing a bridge over the Mereb river that separates the two countries. "We only repatriate people who want to leave," Sebastien Brack, the ICRC communication delegate in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, told IRIN. "Usually it's because life has become too difficult in the country they live in," he added. Over 42,000 Ethiopians and 5,500 Eritreans have returned to their countries of origin since the ICRC began carrying out the repatriations in June 2000. The returnees were among the thousands of people who found themselves separated from their families and friends when war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1998. "In the beginning, repatriations were linked directly to the war, but as time went on the motivations have changed," Brack said. "It's now more due to economic and social problems such as difficulty in finding jobs." Upon arrival in Ethiopia, the government's Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Commission gave transport to the returnees to their chosen destination, some money, blankets and nine-month rations of wheat. The repatriation involved ICRC delegates from Eritrea assisting the returnees up to the bridge, where they were met by their ICRC counterparts from Ethiopia. Both the Ethiopian Red Cross Society and the Red Cross Society of Eritrea assist on their respective sides of the border. A group of Eritreans is due to return home from Ethiopia during another repatriation trip later this week. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bloody two-and-a-half-year war over their 1,000-km border, ending in a peace accord signed in Algiers in 2000. Under the deal, an independent boundary commission was set up to defuse tensions by demarcating the border. The commission issued its ruling in April 2002, but the decision was rejected by Ethiopia because it placed Badme, a symbolic border town over which the war broke out, in Eritrea. Efforts by the international community are going on to try to defuse tension that still exists between the two neighbours.