The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said in Nairobi Tuesday
it will sign a tripartite agreement for the voluntary repatriation
of more than 70,000 Sudanese refugees in Kenya later this week.
A statement from the UNHCR Office in Nairobi said the agreement
will be signed by UNHCR, Kenya and Sudanese governments in Nairobi
on Thursday.
The tripartite agreement will be signed by Kenyan Immigration
Minister Gideon Konchella, Sudanese Minister of State for Interior
Eleu Ayieny Aleu and UNHCR's Director of Operations for the Sudan
Situation, Jean-Marie Fakhouri.
"It was expected that by the time the first organized
repatriation took place in the final quarter of 2005, a legal
framework for the repatriation operation as a whole would have been
established in a tripartite agreement between the governments of
Kenya and Sudan and UNHCR," the UN agency said.
The UNHCR mid last month began the voluntary repatriation of
more than half a million refugees from south Sudan, marking the end
of two decades of exile for many of them.
A first group of 150 refugees among the 72,000 living in
north-western Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp returned home under the
first organized voluntary repatriation.
The UN refugee agency, along with other agencies, has been
carrying out projects to help entire communities, without
differentiating between residents who never left and those who are
returning.
Fakhouri said late last month that they expect to repatriate
60,000 Sudanese refugees in neighboring countries in the next five
months.
Fakhouri said the refugee agency plans to bring refugees home to
South Sudan from the Central African Republic, Kenya, Uganda and
the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by end of May when the
dry season ends.
The other countries hosting large numbers of refugees from south
Sudan are Uganda with 204,400, Ethiopia with 90,500, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC) with 69,400, and Central African
Republic with 36,000 and Egypt with 30,324.
Sudan's civil war in the south came to an end in January, 2005
with the signing of peace accords between the government and
rebels.
More than half a million refugees fled to neighboring countries
during the civil war, while some four million people are displaced
within Sudan, according to the UNHCR.
(Xinhua News Agency January 11, 2006)
