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UNHCR wraps up its operations in the north

The UNHCR has ended its repatriation and resettlement programme for people who fled northern Mali after a Tuareg rebellion broke out in 1990, the UNHCR announced on Friday in Bamako. The four-year programme, from which some 305,000 refugees and displaced persons benefited, cost more than 24 billion CFA francs (about US $240 million), according to Arnauld-Antoine Akodjenou, UNHCR’s representative in Mali. It included the establishment of 638 resettlement points in Gao, Kidal, Mopti, Segou and Timbuktu. UNHCR’s operations will now be limited to a liaison office that will cater mainly for the some 2,000 urban refugees in Mali. Most are from Sierra Leone and Liberia, while there are also a number of asylum-seekers from the Great Lakes region.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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