Too soon to send home displaced in north Yemen-UNHCR

Tue Mar 2, 2010 5:17pm GMT

* Ceasefire holds, but 250,000 remain displaced by war

* Donors snub UNHCR appeal for funds for strategic country



GENEVA, March 2 (Reuters) - Some 250,000 people who fled fled fighting in northern Yemen should not be sent home soon as basic services are lacking in the region although a ceasefire is holding, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday.

Yemen is a strategic country, but donors have yet to pledge any funds to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) which is seeking $39 million this year, it said.

The government struck a truce on Feb. 11 with Houthi rebels who have battled it since 2004 over religious, economic and social grievances in the mountainous north. The conflict created 250,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs).

"There should be no rush in the return of the IDPs, otherwise the problems will remain and the instability might resume," Radhouane Nouicer, director of UNHCR's Middle East and North Africa bureau, told a news briefing in Geneva.

UNHCR is providing tents and other shelter materials to the uprooted and will gradually shift to helping them to go home.

"But we have insisted vis-a-vis the government of Yemen that return must be voluntary, it must be orderly, safe, dignified and sustainable," added Nouicer, who made an official visit to Amran and Hajjah provinces last month.

Yemen, which also faces separatist unrest in the south, has shot to the forefront of Western security concerns since the Yemeni arm of al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to bring down a U.S. airliner over Detroit in December.

"Yemen is a very strategic place and is surrounded by many difficult situations," Nouicer said, citing turmoil in Somalia.

Yemen's economic situation is also extremely difficult, as oil resources decline and many Yemeni workers return from the Gulf due to the financial crisis, he said. Water resources are depleted, unemployment is 43 percent and areas must be demined.

"In my view the root causes that have produced the six rounds of war between the government and the Al Houthi movement need to be addressed," Nouicer said.

There was a need for confidence-building between the population and the government, the disarming of fighters, more economic and social investment in the north, and a strong rehabilitation programme to stabilise the situation, he said.

Of the 250,000 displaced registered by UNHCR, only 30,000 live in the two camps it has been able to establish amid difficult land property issues and tribal interference.

"The tribal situation is extremely tense and clearly many people in that governorate (Amran) do not wish to have these IDPs among them for a long period of time," Nouicer said.

Yemen is also home to some 171,800 refugees -- mainly from Somalia, but also from Iraq, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Somalis are granted automatic refugee status if they register.

"Yemen remains committed to its obligations towards refugees and its asylum-seekers. And it must be assisted to continue with this positive policy," Nouicer said. (Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Jon Hemming)

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