Ethiopian Refugees Return to Ogaden From Kenya
Date=7/19/99
Type=correspondent report
Number=2-251914
Title=Ethiopia refugees
Byline=Lisa Schlein
Dateline=Geneva
Intro: The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, has begun repatriating more than 14-hundred Ethiopians from the Dadaab camps in northeastern Kenya to Ethiopia's Ogaden region. Lisa Schlein in Geneva reports the airlift of the refugees is scheduled to run for several weeks.
Text: the UN refugee agency says this operation is relatively simple because it is being done by air. However, when it is completed, the agency will be ending its work on a refugee crisis which has spanned more than two decades.
The airlift marks the final large-scale return of long-time Ethiopian refugees living in Kenya. At its height, Kenya hosted nearly 100-thousand Ethiopian refugees. UNHCR spokesman Paul Stromberg says the returning refugees will be provided limited assistance, once they reach home.
“They'll be getting food aid and other material which is meant to help them start life right away. This includes about 60 US dollars to help them reach their eventual home area from the airport. And, then some money obviously to help them settle in immediately.”
Mr. Stromberg says this package of aid is a one-time grant. However, he says refugee workers will be monitoring the progress of the returnees for six months. They will make sure they're integrating well into their home communities.
The returnees include Ethiopians who fled the Ogaden when war broke out between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977. They first sought asylum in Somalia. But when civil war erupted there in the early 1990's, they escaped to Kenya. The UN refugee agency has been assisting them in the Dadaab camps since 1991.
Mr. Stromberg says about three-thousand Ethiopians will remain in Kenya after the airlift has ended.
He says these people have a number of reasons why they do not want to return home. “That they know that they may be persecuted at home -- or they may fear that. Maybe that they've inter-married in Kenya. It may be for medical reasons. It may be simply that over the years they've given up the notion of going home and would simply like to remain in Kenya, or where they are at present.
Mr. Stromberg says the refugee agency is exploring several solutions for these people. For instance, they might be able to integrate into the local Kenyan community or they might go on to a third country. In any event, he says about 180-thousand refugees from Somalia and Sudan live in the Dadaab camps. So, the three-thousand Ethiopian refugees can remain there without any problem.
Ethiopian refugees home from Kenya
BBC; July 16
The United Nations refugee agency has begun returning more than fourteen-hundred Ethiopian refugees from Kenya.
The first group was flown home from the Dadaab camps in north-eastern Kenya.
They were given food and materials to help their resettlement as well as the equivalent of sixty dollars.
The airlift marks the final large-scale return of the refugees from Kenya, which once hosted more than one-hundred thousand Ethiopians.
Many of them had fled the Ogaden region when war broke out between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977.
From the newsroom of the BBC World Service