UN AGENCY MOVES DARFUR REFUGEES IN CHAD AWAY FROM PERILOUS BORDER

UN AGENCY MOVES DARFUR REFUGEES IN CHAD AWAY FROM PERILOUS BORDER New York, Mar 7 2008 12:00PM The United Nations refugee agency said today that it has started to move Sudanese refugees who had fled a new wave of attacks in Darfur further inside Chad and away from the strife-torn frontier.

"Tensions along the volatile Chad-Sudan border remain high, with people fleeing in both directions," Jennifer Pagonis, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (<"http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/47d12f264.html">UNHCR), said today at a press conference in Geneva.

Ms. Pagonis said that a second planned transfer of some of the 13,000 new Darfur arrivals in the Birak area of eastern Chad, who fled ground and aerial attacks that began early last month, was delayed because of renewed fighting.

"More displacement is expected," she said, noting that over 70 per cent of the new arrivals are women and children who are being relocated on a strictly voluntary basis.

According to UNHCR, the transfer exercise is particularly challenging because the newly arrived refugees are spread across 11 villages along a 40-km stretch of the remote Chad-Sudan border.

The relocated refugees are being brought to the Kounoungou camp some 70 km away from the border, where they are medically screened, receive their first one-month food ration from the World Food Programme (WFP) and are provided with a package of relief items.

UNHCR and its partners operate 12 refugee camps in eastern Chad that host 240,000 refugees from the war-torn Darfur region. An additional 50,000 refugees from the Central African Republic are in three camps in southern Chad.
2008-03-07 00:00:00.000

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