Angola: Ambassador to Zambia highlights importance of peace for return of refugees

Date: 21 Jun 2010
Source: Government of Angola

Lusaka - The Angolan ambassador in Lusaka, Pedro de Morais, highlighted the positive results of the peace, achieved eight years ago, as a galvanizing factor for the voluntary return of the 24,000 angolan refugees in Zambia.

Speaking on the World Refugee Day at the Maheba settlement camp, 50 miles off Solwezi, the angolan diplomat urged the refugees to return home as peace open good political perspectives for the country's social economic growth.

To celebrate the date representatives of UNHCR and of the governments of Angola and Zambia visited the camp sheltering over sevem thousand angolans together with other refugees from Congo Brazzaville, DRCongo, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan and Somalia.

The new UNHCR representative to Zambia, Joyce Mend Cole from Liberia, and the zambian deputy interior minister, Richard Taima, backed the consolidation of peace and stability in the Southern Africa Development Community as decisive factors to meet alternative solutions for the refugee phenomena.