DRC-UGANDA: Refugees move back and forth across border

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

KAMPALA, 20 Jan 2005 (IRIN) - Out of a wave of more than 10,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who escaped fighting by crossing into Uganda's southwestern Kanungu District, at least 7,000 have now returned, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"Trapped between fighting on one side and an uneasy exile on the other, thousands of Congolese refugees have spent the past ten days crossing back and forth," UNHCR said in a statement issued on Wednesday.

It reported that 10,100 refugees had arrived in the village of Ishasha, near Lake Edward. According to MSF medical coordinator, Dr Jerome Arties who was in Ishasha on Monday and Tuesday, only 1,000 of the roughly 10,000 refugees are still in Ishasha.

However, in Geneva, UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond said at a news briefing on Tuesday that the refugees who were there could return and "we have received reports that more refugees are on their way".

"Ishasha is only three kilometres away from the border along an unmanned border post," Redmond said. "We have requested that the Uganda authorities set up police and army posts near the site to protect the refugees."

Overall, UNHCR reports that up to 20,000 refugees have entered Uganda from the DRC in the past week.

"Two groups appear to have fled DRC for reasons that are unrelated," Redmond said.

He said the refugees at Ishasha "fled the North Kivu region of DRC because of renewed fighting between RDC-Goma and the Mayi-Mayi".

Hundreds of kilometres north of Ishasha, a group of some 7,000 Congolese refugees recently arrived by boat to the village of Nkondo in Hoima District by crossing another border lake, Lake Albert.

"They say they left their homes in the DRC's Ituri region because of fighting between Hema and Lendu tribes," Redmond said.

The refugees at Nkondo need to be relocated, he continued.

Most are "women and children who are reluctant to leave the border area until their husbands and fathers arrive," he said. "This is a source of concern to us, since there are serious health risks for the refugees in staying where they are."

The UNHCR spokeswoman in Kampala, Roberta Russo, said there were already reports of increased cases of diarrhoea, malaria and other respiratory diseases among the refugees.

Nkondo is located at the bottom of a sharp escarpment that is "accessible only by small pick-up trucks down a very precarious road", Remond said. "Given the logistical constraints, it is not possible for UNHCR to provide more than basic assistance."

UNICEF has sent medical kits with emergency drugs that are being given out by local volunteers. The agency has also sent 1,500 doses of polio vaccine and 3,000 doses of measles vaccine to the area, the UNICEF spokesman in Kampala, Chulho Hyun, told IRIN.

"We have also provided some portable latrines, but the priority is to relocate the refugees farther inland," Hyun said.

Russo said on Wednesday that up to 1,000 have been transferred from Nkondo to a more permanent settlement south called Kyaka II in Kyenjojo District, where UNHCR already has been 8,000 Congolese refugees who previously arrived. Kyaka II is equipped to hold another 10,000.

As for the new refugees that were at Ishasha, they "returned home because of lack of food and the poor sanitation conditions there", Russo told IRIN. Local authorities in the area distributed food to the refugees when they first arrived, but the food run out, she said.

MSF said 18 children there were found to have moderate malnutrition.

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