ZAIRE MORE THAN 2,000 ZAIRIANS BACK HOMEIn the first seven days of a large-scale resettlement operation launched by the ICRC, 2,000 displaced Zairians were flown from the Kisangani area back to Goma and Bukavu aboard a Hercules C130, a Boeing 727 and WFP/UNHCR aircraft. The first to return were 150 unaccompanied children who had lost contact with their parents in the course of the past five months. Most of them were reunited with their fathers and mothers or other family members, and a few were taken to orphanages. The ICRC's airborne operation, involving 150 to 200 round trips between mid-April and the end of May, will enable some 20,000 people from the Kisangani area and another 1,000 from Kindu to return home. A further 35,000 people stranded in Kalemie will be assisted on their way across Lake Tanganyika back to the Uvira area. Once back home each family will receive a kit containing three blankets, a jerrican, a tarpaulin, a cooking pot, 1 kg of soap, a hoe and 30 g of vegetable seed. Kits will also be distributed to some 100,000 Zairian refugees returning from Kigoma, Tanzania, and to 100,000 Zairians making their own way back to the Kivu area. The ICRC's relief programme will cover a total of 220,000 to 250,000 people over the next three months.
Another programme which is designed to alleviate anxiety among the Zairian displaced population is the Red Cross message service. About 10,000 messages were exchanged with Kinshasa between early March and mid-April, enabling many separated family members to re-establish contact with each other after months of uncertainty. In several cases memorial ceremonies had already been held for people who were believed to have died, when news of their survival arrived.
LIVES OF THOUSANDS OF REFUGEES AT STAKE
The ICRC is helping more than 250 volunteers of the Red Cross of Zaire to carry out their tasks in aid of refugees in Kasese and Biaro, south of Kisangani, where around 80,000 people are stranded in disastrous conditions. Every day the volunteers bury 60 to 80 refugees, many of whom died before their very eyes of dysentery, cholera, malaria, or simply from exhaustion. The bodies are laid in community graves in groups of ten, often without having been properly identified. The death toll was at its highest when the refugees were making their way from Ubundu and had to cross the River Zaire; here hundreds of people died, some of drowning.
At the beginning of this year the volunteers had to work without any help from International Red Cross organizations. But they never gave up and continued to do what they could for the refugees with the scant resources available to them.
While the Zairian Red Cross volunteers are faced with the task of burying the dead, they also have the more gratifying duty of distributing the food supplies provided by the World Food Programme for the refugees in the camps. Although they undoubtedly have the will and the determination to continue their exemplary work, it is by no means certain that the majority of the refugees will be able to survive for long in this extremely hostile environment. The lives of thousands of people are now at stake.
Further information: Paul-Henry Morard, ICRC Kisangani, tel.: ++871 682 281 030
ALBANIA THIRD ROUND OF DISTRIBUTIONS IN VLORE
Over the weekend, a third ICRC/Albanian Red Cross aid convoy carrying food and medicines arrived in the south-western port of Vlore. The supplies were delivered to the main hospital, the local psychiatric institution and three orphanages. Convoys have left this week for Shkoder in the north and Korce and Bilisht in the east of the country, where food and medical supplies will be distributed to hospitals and social welfare institutions in the towns and surrounding areas.
The ICRC began its relief distributions in Albania in mid-March. Thanks to their close cooperation with the Albanian Red Cross, ICRC delegates have been able to explain the aims of the operation and their presence is well accepted by the population.
Further information: Michael Kleiner, ICRC Tirana, tel.: ++355 42 30 457
SOUTHERN AFRICA MOVE TO BAN LANDMINES
A regional seminar of experts on anti-personnel mines, held from 20 to 23 April in Harare, Zimbabwe, has taken the first step towards declaring Southern Africa a mine-free zone. The experts concluded that even though anti-personnel mines might serve a limited military purpose, their utility was far outweighed by the appalling humanitarian consequences of their use.
Military and defence officials, together with high-level representatives of Ministries of Foreign Affairs from all 12 States of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), called on their governments to put an immediate end to all new deployments and to enact national prohibitions on the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of this weapon.
Participants urged the SADC to place the issue of landmines high on its agenda and to give urgent consideration to matters such as joint training in mine clearance, the establishment of an anti-personnel mines data bank, the promotion of technological cooperation, and expanded programmes for assistance to mine victims.
They further encouraged active participation in the continental conference on landmines to be convened by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Johannesburg this coming May. At this meeting over 50 Member States will be urged to sign an international treaty banning anti-personnel mines at a conference in Ottawa, Canada, at the end of this year.
The Harare seminar was organized by the ICRC, with support from the OAU and the government of the Republic of Zimbabwe.
Further information: Paolo Dell'Oca or N. Ngangura, ICRC Harare, tel.: ++26 34 79 02 68 Johanne Dorais-Slakmon, ICRC Geneva, tel.: ++4122 730 2319
New on the ICRC Public Server - http://www.icrc.org : - Update 97/7 on ICRC activities in Albania, dated 18.4.97
During the week-end of 26 - 27 April 1997, for all information please call the press officer on duty, Pierre Gauthier, on (mobile) 41 79 357 15 24