UN will relocate refugees in Chad

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Source: CCTV.com | 12-22-2006 08:59

The High Commissioner for Refugees in the United Nations has appealed to the UN Security Council to reach a decision that could improve security for hundreds of thousand of refugees in eastern Chad.

Eastern Chad has become a gathering ground for desperate refugees. In the last three years, hundreds of thousands have poured in from neighboring war-torn Dafur in western Sudan. And violence has spilled over the Chad-Sudan border. Tens of thousands of Chadians have been driven from their homes over the past year by soldiers using tactics borrowed from Darfur's Janjaweed militia.

In the face of a growing humanitarian crisis, the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees has travelled to Chad. Antonio Guterres is appealing to the UN Security Council for a more complex approach to address the failing security situation in the region.

UN high commissioner for refugees, Antonio Guterres said: "This is the moment in which a very important discussion is taking place, namely in the Security Council about the possibility of a presence of a multidimensional nature trying to create better security conditions for refugees, for displaced people, for the civilian populations."

A more pressing concern is moving refugee camps close to the Chad-Sudan border further inland. The past month has seen villages close to the camps repeatedly ambushed and looted. And Guterres hopes moving camps away from the border, will mean fewer attacks from marauding militia. But relocation will involve hundreds of thousands of refugees ... something the UN concedes will be a huge logistic challenge.

Editor:Ji Xuewen