USA Takes in 6,000 Somali From Uganda
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July 21, 2011Kampala — THE American government is to resettle 5,800 refugees from Nakivale refugee camp in Isingiro district to the United States, Prosy Katura, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) protection officer, has revealed.
Katura said a team has already been sent to Nakivale to scrutinise the refugees to ensure they have no links with al-Qaeda, an extremist group.
The American taskforce at the camp will also study files of individual refugees since they arrived in Uganda.
Explaining the reason of resettling Somalis to the US, Katura said Somali refugees have failed to integrate with other refugee groups living in Nakivale and with the local communities because of their unique language and culture.
She added that the group cannot go back to Somalia since the country is still unstable and they fear to be killed and persecuted. Nakivale has about 470,000 refugees from Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, Congo, Burundi, Kenya and Eritrea. There are other refugees in Uganda, in camps of Kyangwari, Orukinga and Kyaka.
During Buchholz’s visit, Burundian refugees also demanded to be resettled to a third country, arguing that they, too, have stayed in the camp for a long time and cannot be repatriated.
The United States resettles refugees largely according to country of origin as well as the urgency of the situation.
Even though the US remains the world’s largest country of resettlement, its refugee admissions have been steadily declining over the last decade, particularly since the September 11 terrorist attacks. The number of refugees admitted went down from 132,000 in 1992 to about 28,000 in 2003.
Resettlement patterns in American states are generally dominated by certain ethnic communities. Many Somali and Ethiopian refugees have been resettled in Minnesota.
The UNHCR is a partner in the US refugee resettlement programme and identifies those refugees most in need of urgent resettlement.
The agency has identified three “durable solutions” to refugee concerns: voluntary return to the country of origin, local integration in the host community, or resettlement to a third country.
Resettlement is most often promoted by UNHCR “when individual refugees are at risk, or when there are other reasons to help them leave the region.”
source: allafrica.com
