EPDP Grateful to UNHCR Chief's Visit to Eritrean Refugees; Asks Him to Initiate Grand Program
2016-02-11 22:44:07 Written by EPDP Information Office Published in EPDP News Read 2482 times-
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The Eritrean People's Democratic Party (EPDP) expressed profound gratefulness to Mr. Filippo Grandi, the new UNHCR chief, who visited Eritrean refugees in northern Ethiopia on 2 February and listened to their urgent requests to improve their situation. This is the new commissioner's first visit to Africa.
The EPDP memo, dated 10 February, also congratulated Mr. Grandi for his recent appointment as head of the UN refugee agency. "As you personally witnessed the situation and also heard it from the refugees at the Hatsats camp in northern Ethiopia, the vast majority of Eritrean refugees fleeing from the unbearable repression in their country are very young and in need of great attention to their disquieting current situation and future prospects', the EPDP memo stated. The memo went on that what the refugees asked him were repeatedly raised in the past by Eritreans in the opposition camp.
The UN Commissioner told the refugees that the UNHCR will do its best to create opportunities at the camps. He added : "Your points are well taken and please rest assured that I will do my best to call attention to your situation so we can mobilize more resources and improve the living conditions in the camps."
It is to be recalled that the former UNHCR chief, Antonio Guterres, also visited Eritrean refugees in Shagarab, eastern Sudan, in January 2012, and promised them better security and improvement in their situation. But better security and improvement in the living condition of refugees is still to come...
Printed below is the full text of the EPDP foreign office memo to the new UNHCR Commissioner, Mr. Grandi.
To: H.E. Mr. Filippo Grandi, High Commissioner, UNHCR Geneva,
Date: February 10, 2016
Subject: Gratitude for Your Attention to Eritrean Refugees in N. Ethiopia
Dear High Commissioner,
We in the Eritrean People's Democratic Party (EPDP), a mainstream Eritrean opposition organization struggling for democratic change in Eritrea, wish to congratulate you for taking up this high post in the UN system that you well deserved, and to also express our profound gratefulness for your kind attention to Eritrean refugees in northern Ethiopia. This is a promising gesture to those refugees whose needs have not been addressed adequately.
Dear Mr. Grandi,
As you personally witnessed the situation and also heard it from the refugees at the Hatsats camp in northern Ethiopia, the vast majority of Eritrean refugees fleeing from the unbearable repression in their country are very young and in need of great attention to their disquieting current situation and future prospects.
As those young refugees you talked told you, also we in the Eritrean opposition in general, and EPDP in particular, have been repeatedly reminding the UNHCR to initiate a pack programme to address their urgent needs before those young refugees resort to dangerous risks like what has been happening to them in the Sinai and the Mediterranean Sea. As you can check in your predecessor's archives on Eritrea, our memos to UNHCR and those to EU (copied to your agency) and other concerned world bodies stressed the need of providing them better shelter, food and health facilities as well as academic and vocational education with the aim of arming the young Eritrean refugees in the Ethiopian and Sudanese camps with essential skills that would benefit post-dictatorship Eritrea, or even make those refugees useful citizens of any country of their asylum, if they remained abroad. Such a grand programme could, we believed, acquire the necessary resources from grants of EU member countries and others that had suspended technical assistance grants to the regime in Asmara for its bad record in human and political rights of its own people.
Dear UNHCR High Commissioner,
We are now happy that you heard those same demands from the very affected young refugees, and we trust you will initiate such a programme as a matter of priority in the global humanitarian action you are to lead for the coming five years.
Respectfully yours,
Wolde-Yesus Ammar,
Head, EPDP Foreign Relations Office
