UNHCR Says Nearly 140,000 Refugees Return to Somalia in 8 years

MOGADISHU Xinhua: Some 139,155 Somali refugees have returned home since December 2014, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday.

The UN refugee agency said it supported 95,185 refugees to return to Somalia, while a total of 43,970 returned spontaneously during the period.

The UNHCR said in a report released in the Somali capital of Mogadishu that the majority of the Somali refugees returned from Kenya, followed by Yemen, Djibouti, and Libya.

The UNHCR said Somalia is hosting 39,475 refugees and asylum-seekers as of June 30, among which 66 percent are women and children.

“The majority of refugees and asylum-seekers, 65 percent, are from Ethiopia, followed by Yemen 30 percent, Syria 4 percent and other countries 1 percent,” the UNHCR said.

According to the report, 74 percent of refugees and asylum-seekers reside in urban or peri-urban settings across Woqooyi Galbeed and Bari regions in the northern part of the country.

In June, the UNHCR said about 20,000 new internal displacements were monitored by the UNHCR-led Protection and Solutions Monitoring Network (PSMN), the major drivers of which are conflict and insecurity (6,000), flood (8,000), and other reasons (6,000).

It said there were 74,000 internal displacements in May, noting that out of these, 8,000 were caused by conflict or insecurity, 64,000 were due to floods, and 2,000 were displaced for other reasons.

According to the UNHCR, the highest displacement arrival in April due to floods was recorded in Hiraan (50,700) in central Somalia and Gedo (3,170) in the southern region.