While some of the refugees who streamed across the border from Togo into Benin by the thousands last April have finally gone home, more than 19Â 000 are still in exile, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The UNHCR, which is updating data on the refugee situation in Benin, said 10Â 960 people were registered in its Come and Agame refugee camps, while 8Â 130 refugees from this year’s eruption of political tension in Togo were living in the capital, Cotonou, or elsewhere in the country.
The agency estimated last August that 24Â 500 refugees had fled east from Togo into Benin following unrest triggered by a disputed presidential poll on April 24. A further 15Â 000 went west into Ghana.
The government of newly elected President Faure Gnassingbe has repeatedly called on the refugees to return in the name of national reconciliation.
Floods of people thronged across the tiny country’s borders late April as violence degenerated into urban warfare in the capital, Lomé, when Gnassingbe was declared winner of a poll the opposition claimed was rigged.
Opposition protesters, angered to see Gnassingbe step into the post held for 38 years by his father Gnassingbe Eyadema, until he died last February, fled Togo in fear of persecution as security forces stepped in to restore calm.
A government inquiry last month said 154 people had been killed and more than 600 hurt in the violence, while the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said 400 to 500 people had died.
Many refugees have said they fear persecution should they return.
At Come camp, UNHCR official Van Casteele said there have been no new arrivals for the past two months and that most of the 239 unaccompanied minors originally registered have now been reunited with their families. Only 54 children are still living alone at Come, he said.
Van Casteele said the agency, with the help of the Beninese authorities, is currently working on updating registration in line with its Project Profile, which offers each refugee a certificate as well as a falsification-proof ID card, with photograph and fingerprint. The registration method is used in 40 countries.
A spokesperson for the refugees at Come, Imorou Kossi, told journalists visiting the camp that its residents continue to fear for their safety and complained of inadequate food and health care.
The agency has just bought an ambulance for the camp and has reimbursed the cost of medical care to local communities, who are shouldering some of the burden of the displaced, the UNHCR said. A team from the medical charity Médecins sans Frontières is expected in January.
As for food, the UNHCR says the refugees are receiving the required 2Â 100 calories a day but that some are used to eating greater quantities of food.
The UN food agency, the World Food Programme (WFP), meanwhile urged donors to contribute cash needed to feed the refugees until March next year.
”Every refugee in the camps has been receiving a full ration of food on a monthly basis,” the WFP’s spokesperson for West Africa, Marcus Prior, said.
”The fact that some appear to be dissatisfied only underlines just how difficult life as a refugee is, even when you are receiving assistance,” he said.
Despite a big contribution from Norway to its appeal for $3-million, almost a million dollars is still required to meet food needs until next March, he said.
The WFP is supplying food aid not only to the refugees in the Benin camps but also to thousands who fled to Ghana or were displaced within Togo. — Irin