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633 Ethiopian Refugees in Sudan Repatriated
Some 633 Ethiopian refugees left the Sudanese capital Khartoum for their homeland Tuesday, the first time for them in more than 20 years, a UN official said.
They are the last batch of 10,547 refugees in Sudan who are being repatriated to their Horn of Africa nation, said Paul Stromberg, spokesman for the Nairobi-based U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) regional office.
After Ethiopia was plunged into a civil war in 1974, tens of thousands of Ethiopians fled to neighboring Sudan. Although peace prevailed again in the country in 1991, it has taken years to finish the repatriation work.
Between 1993 and 1998, more than 74,000 Ethiopians returned home, but the repatriation of thousands more only started last December.
UNHCR revoked the Ethiopians' refugee status in September 1999, but their repatriation was delayed by the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which broke out in May 1998 and formally ended last December.
The 633 Ethiopians will travel hundreds of kilometers across the border and return home on Wednesday.
At the end of the journey, UNHCR will provide them with food, basic household goods and plastic sheeting to build temporary shelters, as well as 775 birr (about 94 U.S. dollars) to begin a new life, Stromberg said.
The Ethiopian government has also promised to give the refugees farming land.
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