• Text size Normal size text | Increase text size by 10% | Increase text size by 20% | Increase text size by 30%
  • Also available in French

Camp closure brings UNHCR closer to phase-out from eastern Ethiopia

News Stories, 29 June 2005

© UNHCR/B.Heger
A circle of stones is all that remains at Ethiopia's Aisha camp after a tukul &; a traditional dome-shaped shelter &; was dismantled by homebound Somali refugees.

AISHA CAMP, Ethiopia, June 29 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has officially closed Aisha refugee camp in eastern Ethiopia a month after its last Somali residents went home. This leaves just one camp in an area that used to host the world's largest concentration of refugees.

At its peak in the early 1990s, there were 628,000 Somali refugees in eight camps in eastern Ethiopia. Since UNHCR began repatriating refugees to north-western Somalia, better known as the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, in 1997, most of the camps have been consolidated and finally closed. Aisha is the seventh camp to close in eastern Ethiopia.

At the closing ceremony on Monday, UNHCR Deputy Regional Liaison Representative Fernando Protti Alvarado thanked the host community and the government for their hospitality to the refugees and for the peaceful co-existence despite the obvious fact that refugees add to the strain on local resources.

He handed over the land and all the facilities used by the refugees to the Administrator of Aisha woreda (district), Ferhan Ibrahim. Worth about US$158,000, these assets included the offices of UNHCR and its main government counterpart ARRA (Authority for Refugees and Returnees Affairs), a health centre, a school, a women's community centre, a grinding mill, a warehouse, a food distribution centre, a borehole, a motorised water pumping system and a generator house with a generator.

Protti assured representatives of the local government and elders that UNHCR would take care of the repair and maintenance of the school, health centre and water facility, and replace the old generator with a new one. These tasks should be finalized in two weeks.

The local administration and elders had requested UNHCR to help run the facilities for an interim period until the local government develops the requisite capacity to manage them well. "We would have liked to do so," responded Protti. "But since UNHCR is a humanitarian agency dealing with refugees and not a development organisation, the local government has to be able to take the full responsibility of managing the facilities."

Ato Ayalew Aweke, a senior ARRA official, witnessed the handover ceremony at Aisha woreda. He echoed Protti's words of gratitude to the local administration and the Aisha community for their hospitality to the refugees.

"We are aware of the adverse impact on the environment as a result of the presence of refugees for the last 16 years. However, this should be taken as a cost a nation must pay to honour its international obligations," said the Ethiopian official.

The Somalilanders in Aisha camp fled civil war in the 1980s and the overthrow of the Siad Barre regime in 1991. The camp was opened in November 1989 and counted 13,986 refugees in 2003 before repatriation began. Voluntary repatriation from Aisha started in May 2004 and ended in May this year, with the last convoy, the 213th since repatriation started in 1997, leaving the camp on May 28.

© UNHCR/K.Gebre Egziabher
UNHCR's Fernando Protti Alvarado shaking hands with Aisha district's Ferhan Ibrahim during the handover ceremony at Aisha camp.

With the closure of this camp, UNHCR has assisted home some 240,000 Somali refugees, not to mention of the hundreds of thousands of others who have returned on their own. "This milestone brings us one step closer to phasing out our operation in eastern Ethiopia, an area which 15 years ago was the largest refugee-hosting area in the world," said UNHCR's Protti.

Only one camp – Kebribeyah – remains in eastern Ethiopia now. It houses over 10,000 refugees who are from other parts of Somalia where it is not safe to return. UNHCR expects to repatriate the refugee population there and to close the camp and phase out its eastern Ethiopian operation once the situation in Somalia stabilises.

By Kisut Gebre Egziabher in Aisha camp, Ethiopia

• DONATE NOW • • GET INVOLVED • • STAY INFORMED •

 

Related stories by:

UNHCR country pages

Crisis in Horn of Africa

Tens of thousands of Somalis are fleeing conflict and drought into Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya.

Somalia Emergency: Urgent Appeal

Widespread malnutrition among Somali refugees requires immediate action.

Donate to this crisis

Kenya Floods Threaten Refugees

Flood waters in north-eastern Kenya in mid-November, caused havoc in the Dadaab refugee complex of three camps. Over 100,000 of the 160,000 refugees have been badly affected by the flooding, particularly in Ifo camp. Refugees' homes were swept away and latrines have overflowed and collapsed. The main supply route linking Dadaab to the rest of Kenya has been cut by the rains, blocking all aid deliveries by road.

To get refugees to safety on higher ground, UNHCR started transferring people to Hagadera camp, 20kms away – often using donkey carts. A series of airlifts has brought in fuel for generators, emergency health kits, tarpaulins, and shovels to fill sandbags to keep the flood waters at bay. Essentials items such as plastic tarpaulins, sleeping mats, and food have been distributed to refugees who lost everything.

These floods have been compared to the massive flooding which followed the record 1997 El Nino rains that swamped much of low-lying eastern Kenya.

Posted on 29 November 2006

Kenya Floods Threaten Refugees

Post-Tsunami Recovery in Puntland

Away from the glare of the international spotlight, Somalia in the Horn of Africa was also hit by last December's Asian tsunami which rolled across the Indian Ocean. UNHCR, as part of an integrated UN emergency response, distributed life-saving supplies, including plastic sheets, blankets, and kitchen sets, to some 45,000 Somalis living along a severely damaged 650km strip of coast in the northeast.

A year on, the area is getting back to its pre-tsunami state with UNHCR and its partners now making the leap from providing emergency aid to investing in development projects. In an effort to improve the lives of the inhabitants of one of the poorest places on Earth, UNHCR has begun rehabilitating schools, building markets and women's centres, as well as constructing roads to help economic development.

The UN's relief efforts are concentrated in a 650km stretch of coastline between Hafun and Garaad in northeast Somalia, an area also known as Puntland. In war-ravaged Somalia, Puntland is a relatively peaceful self-declared autonomous enclave.

Post-Tsunami Recovery in Puntland

Flood Airdrop in Kenya

Over the weekend, UNHCR with the help of the US military began an emergency airdrop of some 200 tonnes of relief supplies for thousands of refugees badly hit by massive flooding in the Dadaab refugee camps in northern Kenya.

In a spectacular sight, 16 tonnes of plastic sheeting, mosquito nets, tents and blankets, were dropped on each run from the C-130 transport plane onto a site cleared of animals and people. Refugees loaded the supplies on trucks to take to the camps.

Dadaab, a three-camp complex hosting some 160,000 refugees, mainly from Somalia, has been cut off from the world for a month by heavy rains that washed away the road connecting the remote camps to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Air transport is the only way to get supplies into the camps.

UNHCR has moved 7,000 refugees from Ifo camp, worst affected by the flooding, to Hagadera camp, some 20 km away. A further 7,000 refugees have been moved to higher ground at a new site, called Ifo 2.

Posted in December 2006

Flood Airdrop in Kenya

Ethiopia: Arriving in Assosa Play video

Ethiopia: Arriving in Assosa

Zeneib was living in her husband's village in Sudan's Blue Nile state when it was attacked. She lost three brothers and then endured tremendous hardship on the journey to Ethiopia with her children.
Somalia: No Peace HerePlay video

Somalia: No Peace Here

Fighting continues to force people to leave areas of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. Abduallahi Ali is fleeing from one makeshift camp to another, saying he fears for his life.
Somalia: Help at HomePlay video

Somalia: Help at Home

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, on a visit to Somalia, urges stepped up assistance to people inside the country.