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Around 15 000
Angolans have returned from Zambia,
mainly from Meheba camp near the border between the
two
countries. The first convoy has also set out
from Mayukwayukwa camp in western Zambia
carrying
505 Angolans on the trip of over 2 000
km to Cazombo in the Angolan frontier province
of Moxico. It is the second camp in Zambia where
UNHCR is organising return convoys. In addition,
some 17 000 Angolan refugees have gone home from
camps in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo (DRC),
and 3 000 from Namibia since the agency began
organising returns in June 2003.
The UNHCR plans to help return 220 000 Angolan
refugees in a phased programme over two years.
Hundreds of thousands of uprooted Angolans have
returned home since a peace agreement took hold
early in 2003 ending three decades of civil
strife. But because most areas in Angola do not
have the basic infrastructure to support
returning refugees, UNHCR has decided to
organise returns to areas with the capacity to
receive the refugees in one of the
world's most
heavily mined countries. The UNHCR is working
with the Mine Assessment Group to open new areas
around this town. The agency and the Angolan
authorities have also agreed to reopen a land
route to the Zambian border.
Because hundreds of Angolan refugees have
returned on their own initiative, UNHCR is also
continuing efforts to open up new districts in
Angola for returnees, ensuring that they have
access to water, sanitation, schools, medical
services and shelters. Returning refugees will
receive
landmine-awareness training, HIV/AIDS
information and medical assistance where needed.
They also receive a reintegration kit of food
rations, a construction kit to rebuild their
homes and basic household supplies. Once in
their villages, they receive agricultural tools
and seeds from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
The UNHCR has assisted 17 000 spontaneous
returnees to Angola – 50% of those refugees
making their own way
home in 2003 – with the
same package received by those who joined its
convoys. The UNHCR has now begun the
repatriation of nearly 10 000 former Angolan
asylum seekers currently living at Mayukwayukwa
refugee settlement,
450 km from Lusaka. A UNHCR
information officer noted that
8 415 of those in
the camp had expressed willingness to return to Lumbala-Ngimbu in Angola. Another group of
1 467
persons will return to Cazombo in Moxico and
Cuando-Cubango regions of Angola.
The International Organisation for Migration
(IOM) and
other partners have already secured 10 buses,
six trucks and
two Angolan registered aircraft
to transport the refugees from Zambia. The
aircraft will move refugees returning to Cazombo
at the rate of 200 a day, possibly increasing to
500 a day.
Mayukwayukwa refugee settlement was established
on the outskirts of Kaoma in 1966. More than 37
000 Angolans were living in the camp at the
beginning of 2003. However, some of them left
the camp on their own without waiting for
UNHCR's assistance. Stanley Miseleni, who
supervises the Western province UNHCR office in
Mongu, explained that refugees who have opted to
return to Angola on their own
will not be
catered for under the current repatriation
exercise. He said that his office had
transported all the refugees who left the
settlement for Angola ahead of the official programme to the border. According to Manuel
Armando, second secretary at the Angolan
consulate, 1 500 refugees left Zambia on their
own. The UNHCR has repatriated
14 000 refugees
from Meheba settlement since the exercise
started in July 2003.
There are some 13 000 refugees and asylum
seekers in Angola, the majority of them from the
DRC. While many long time refugees have now
integrated into urban or
rural communities, UNHCR is still assisting 9 600 of them
in
Luanda, Sungui, Viana (south of Luanda) and
Kautepwe (Moxico province), among other
locations. The refugees get support for farming
and other self-reliance activities, as well as
the construction of houses, classrooms and
health posts for their communities. The UNHCR in
Angola has appealed to the authorities to
guarantee the safety of refugees and
humanitarian workers after reports of ongoing
harassment
of Congolese refugees at a camp near
the capital, Luanda.
UNHCR spokeswoman Delphine Marie confirmed that
the
300 Congolese refugees at Sungui camp in
Bengo province, 72 km north of Luanda, have
allegedly been harassed over the last three
months. UNHCR has expressed concern over the
frequency and pattern of harassment, which may
have resulted from a dispute over the use of
this particular piece of land.
The major migrations that have followed the end
of the war have increased the pressure on an
already strained educational system in Angola.
In 2000 public expenditure
on education was less
than 2% of GDP – much lower than in other
sub-Saharan countries. The World Food Programme
(WFP) is supporting the returning refugees, and
in a bid to increase attendance at primary
schools has started a school feeding programme.
The programme, launched in cooperation with the
Ministry of Education and several NGOs, aims to
take the first steps towards full enrolment of
children of school-going age by 2015. One of the
schools that will be included in the programme
is situated in a poor, crowded suburb of Lobito
in Luanda, where small brick houses lacking
sanitary facilities, water and electricity cling
to the dusty slopes. Most of the people living
there are returnees, and many malnourished
infants and young children have had to go for
therapeutic feeding. Few of the children have
ever gone to school. WFP expects between 600 and
700 of
these pupils to benefit from the school
feeding scheme. |
