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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

ERITREA: Eritreans reapplying for refugee status in Sudan

NAIROBI, 11 February 2003 (IRIN) - Tens of thousands of Eritreans are reapplying for refugee status in Sudan, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

It said that more than a month after the 31 December deadline which ended refugee status for hundreds of thousands of Eritreans - most of them living in Sudan - dozens of legal teams are sifting through nearly 27,000 applications from Eritreans who want to remain in Sudan as refugees.

The applications - one per family - represent nearly 100,000 people living mainly in refugee camps and urban centres in Sudan.

"Some Eritreans say they cannot return home for fear of persecution because of their political affiliations or religious beliefs. Others say their marriage to non-Eritreans, particularly to Ethiopians, will place them and their families at risk if they return home," UNHCR said.

The legal teams recently completed screening applications in Gedaref and Wad Madani, and have shifted the emphasis to remote refugee camps in eastern Sudan before these are rendered inaccessible by the rainy season.

Meanwhile, some 32,000 Eritreans who have registered to go home are still waiting for the return operation to resume. Repatriation was suspended last June due to the rainy season and was expected to start again in October. But this was delayed by the closure of the Sudan-Eritrea border. UNHCR says it is trying to negotiate with both governments to allow the stalled operation to resume.

More than 100,000 Eritrean refugees have already returned home, some 50,000 of them with UNHCR assistance, the agency said. An estimated 223,000 Eritreans remain in Sudan, where many sought asylum more than 30 years ago. Some 92,000 of them are in refugee camps, while the rest are assumed to be in urban areas.

Themes: (IRIN) Refugees/IDPs

[ENDS]

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