ANGOLA-ZAMBIA: Govt allows refugees to be airlifted

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

JOHANNESBURG, 8 Sep 2005 (IRIN) - The Angolan government has finally given clearance for a flight operation expected to repatriate more than 700 refugees from neighbouring Zambia, according to relief officials.

"The clearance was given yesterday [7 September] and a planeload of 53 refugees left soon after permission was granted," said Anthony Mogga, head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in the western Zambian town of Mongu. About 120 refugees will be repatriated on two more flights on Thursday, via the airbridge that is expected to continue until the second week of November.

Since 22 August 724 refugees have been housed at a makeshift transit camp in Mongu, about 700 km west of the capital, Lusaka. The refugees are headed for the Angolan central province of Huambo.

"We are continuing with our efforts to ease the fairly heavy caseload, as the camp is not meant to shelter so many people for a long period. We hope to operate two flights per day and are in negotiations to ensure that," said Mogga in Lusaka, where he was attending a meeting of the Zambia-Angola-UNHCR tripartite commission on the repatriation programme.

Approximately 310,000 refugees have returned to Angola since a peace agreement was signed in 2002, some 175,000 of them with UNHCR assistance.

The Geneva-based International Organisation of Migration (IOM), responsible for transporting the refugees, said it expected to repatriate 35,000 Angolans by the end of this year but this figure could be revised downwards as a result of the delays.

IOM's Manny Villaflores said the final figure could be about 22,000 refugees before this year's repatriation programme drew to a close in November, ahead of the rainy season.

However, Mogga hoped the Tripartite Commission would try to ensure that closer to 35,000 Angolans were sent home by the time the 2005 repatriation programme ended.

During 27 years of civil war an estimated 500,000 Angolans fled to neighbouring countries - Zambia, Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana and South Africa - and millions more were displaced internally.

[ENDS]