In four months, the Ethiopian government and its partners will resettle an estimated 1.8 million internally displaced persons, sources told ADV.
Ethiopia’s national steering committee led by the Minister of Peace Zeynu Jemal said Saturday evening that plans to repatriate 800,000 IDPs to their previous homes by 18 April, 2019 was well underway.
Politically-motivated conflict has uprooted some 1.4 million Ethiopians from their homes since the start of the year, according to the Internally Displaced Monitoring Center report in September 2018.
This has been largely due to new ethnic clashes in Gedeo and West Guji region in southern Ethiopia, and continued violence in the Oromia-Somali border region.
Violence also continued to flare in the Oromia-Somali border region, with 200,000 people fleeing their homes in the first half of the year.
Another 500,000 people fled clashes in the last quarter of 2017. Nearly all areas along the regional border have been affected.
The region has been hard hit by food shortages, which has compounded the crisis.
Speaking on national television on Saturday evening, Minister Jemal explained that a steering committee drawn from seven ministries as well as the federal police and attorney general’s office.
He explained that the committee had carried out studies to explore the best possible way of returning the IDPs in a three-phased plan.
“They will create the enabling environment for the returnees to be rehabilitated effectively,’ the minister said, adding that it will also ensure peace and stability in the areas where the displaced people will return.
He was blunt in hammering out that individuals or groups who forcibly displaced them will be brought to justice.
The appealed to the country’s partners to help mobilize resources to ensure the success of the program.
He recalled that 2.8 million had been internally displaced in 2018 but that 1.2 million of them had been resettled at the end of same year.
SOURCE: Africa Daily Voice
