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UNHCR officials meet President, PM

By Daniel Tripp

A high powered delegation from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will meet Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe today to discuss solutions for Sri Lanka's 800,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) following talks with the President, Foreign Secretary and Vanni Rehabilitation Minister yesterday.

UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner, Kamel Morjane and Director of the Asia Bureau, Marie Fakhouri, visited Trincomalee, Vavuniya, Jaffna and Puttalam earlier this week in order to directly assess the disruptive effects of the spontaneous return of more than 103,000 IDPs so far this year and develop both immediate and long term durable solutions.

The mission will also serve as a means of assessing the level of emergency funding to be allocated to Sri Lanka in addition to the 6,590,176 US dollars already allocated for this year.

The continued commitment of both the Government and LTTE towards the development of the peace process is definitely beneficial to obtaining international support.

Other issues to be discussed include continued co-operation with the government and support of national programmes such as the Triple-R framework, further improvements towards freedom of movement and transparency and the necessity of expanding available resources to meet the immediate needs of returnees.

The acceleration of De-mining programmes in the North and East are likely to appear on the agenda. Mine clearance is still taking place at a much lower rate than the return of IDPs. Despite UNHCR warnings and the establishment of several mine risk education programmes in uncleared areas people's desire to return to their area of origin is still overwhelming the risks resulting in continued tragedies.

An extensive profiling and registration programme of IDPs implemented by the UNHCR has now received 122,849 out of an anticipated 250,000 entries. Previously a lack of adequate statistics and information has been a major obstacle to effective relief distribution in Sri Lanka. However, The Ministry of Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Refugees' Policy Planning and Co-ordination Unit is expected to produce a preliminary report by mid-September.

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