DAKAR (AlertNet) – More than 2,000 Malian refugees who were living in overcrowded makeshift shelters in a Nigerien border village have been moved inland in Niger to a refugee camp for security and better living conditions, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.
The refugees were moved from the village of Sinegodar to a camp that can host 10,000 people in the town of Abala.
Over 28,000 people have fled to Niger since the outbreak of fighting between Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA) and government troops in northern Mali, the IOM said in a statement.
The United Nations estimates that over 195,000 have been uprooted from their homes by the conflict that started in January, with 100,000 of them seeking refuge in neighbouring Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Niger.
The IOM, the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and Niger’s government at the weekend started relocating refugees from Sinegodar and other villages close to the Mali-Niger border.
"Apart from security considerations, this relocation is essential to alleviate the pressure on local populations living in food insecure areas and villages such as Sinegodar, which simply cannot meet the needs of so many newly arrived people," Abibatou Wane, the head of IOM in Niger, said in the statement.
More than 6 million people across Niger are facing food shortages due to drought, with the northwestern part of the country including Sinegodar being one of the areas hardest hit by the food crisis.
Locals, already struggling with the food crisis, are further burdened by sharing the little food they have with the unexpected refugees, some aid agencies have said.
The UNHCR says it has installed 500 tents and services, including water trucking, for the newly transferred families at the camp in Abala.
Many refugees have been reluctant to move out of the makeshift settlements near the Mali-Niger border in the hope that fighting would end soon and they could quickly return home. The UNHCR has been briefing them on the merits of moving to a safer location.
Meanwhile the UNHCR has completed the relocation of 39,390 refugees from the Mali-Mauritania border to a camp in the town of Mbera in Mauritania, the agency said on Tuesday.
More than 740 refugees who were in transit locations at the Mali border in Oudalan and Soum provinces in Burkina Faso have been moved to sites located further inland, the UNHCR said in a statement.
“Potential new arrivals from Mali – 60 to 100 a day according to the authorities – are now just passing through the transit points at the border and continuing their way directly to the proper refugee sites of Ferrerio, Gandafobou, Mentao or Damba,” the UNHCR said.
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
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