Friday, February 09, 2007
"They are in need of food and other emergency supplies," Millicent Mutuli, UNHCR regional spokeswoman, was quoted as saying by the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) on Thursday, adding that the UNHCR would work out an assistance plan with the Ethiopian government.
According to IRIN, an information service under the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Somalis, who started arriving in April 2006, are living among local communities in the southeastern zone of the Somali Region of Ethiopia.
Many were forced out of Somalia by droughts, floods and the recent conflict between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).
Mutuli said the estimate was based on interviews with local authorities and elders in the border areas where the Somalis have settled.
A more definitive figure would be available when the UNHCR carried out refugee identification and registration with the Ethiopian government.
The three-week assessment mission visited Gode, Kelafo, Mustahil, Ferfer, Dollo Ado, Dollo Bay, Bare, Suftu, Warder, Geladin and Jijiga. Most of the Somalis they found were women, the elderly and children.
"The situation necessitates that we activate our contingency plan to provide international protection to genuine refugees as soon as screening and registration is conducted," said Ilunga Ngandu, the UNHCR's regional liaison representative in Ethiopia.
The agency has begun registering the new arrivals in Kebribeyah. Ethiopia already hosts 17,000 refugees from Somalia in Kebribeyah camp, near the town of Jijiga.
At its peak in the early 1990s, there were 628,000 Somali refugees in eight camps in eastern Ethiopia.
Since 1997, when the UNHCR began repatriating refugees to Somalia's self-declared Republic of Somaliland, most of the camps have been closed.
Source: Xinhua, Feb 09, 2007