17 September 2002

Khartoum, Sudan: A team of lawyers mobilized by the Bonn-based United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) in a record three-week period has taken up assignments in five Sudanese cities to help determine the refugee status of some 300,000 Eritreans currently in the country.

"Most of the UN Volunteers are very experienced in RSD (refugee status determination) and have worked in countries that have faced a similar situation -- this is likely to help very much in the exercise," said UNV Programme Officer Renato Pinto.

The UN Volunteers will interview Eritreans to determine if they are eligible as refugees, inform these people about the situation in their country and promote the voluntary repatriation to Eritrea, he added. They collaborate with their Sudanese counterpart, the Commission of Refugees (COR); in every interview there will be an international UNV lawyer, a Sudanese lawyer recruited by COR and a translator. Twenty-four of the teams will adjudicate cases on first instance and four will form appeal teams.

The 28 UN Volunteers from 21 countries are working under a project jointly implemented by the Government of Sudan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The UN Volunteers will serve until the end of January 2003 in Khartoum, Medani, Gedaref, Kassala and Port Sudan -- five cities hosting many Eritrean refugees. These Eritreans were displaced by their country's war of independence that ended in June 1991, or as a result of the border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea that ended in June 2000.

"Having done RSD before I can exchange knowledge with the other volunteers," said Egyptian UN Volunteer Noha Hefny, a former national UN Volunteer in Cairo who has just started her work in Gedaref, about 500 kilometres southeast of the capital Khartoum. "It's good to be a volunteer because you do not work as a machine: sharing knowledge leads to tolerance."

The lawyers, all well versed in international refugee law, took a week of orientation conducted jointly by UNHCR and UNV in Khartoum before being deployed to their centres. In the past two years, UNHCR has assisted some 58,000 Eritrean refugees to return home from Sudan. UNHCR also supports the reintegration of returning refugees inside Eritrea.

"The commitment and devotion of the UN Volunteers to settle the cases of their assigned refugees in many countries has been greatly appreciated and recognized by UNHCR," said Ibrahim Hussein, UNV's programme specialist for the Arab States.