The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, has raised concerns about a fresh round of forced return of refugees from Cameroon into northeast Nigeria.
It came after some 887 were repatriated in six trucks provided by the Nigerian military and Cameroonian police from the Kolofata border site.
The refugees were rounded up at 7:30 in the evening of Tuesday and forcibly removed to Banki in Nigeria in desperate conditions.
UNHCR is concerned that refugees are returning to a dangerous situation in which conditions do not yet exist to make returns safe and sustainable.
“The involuntary return of refugees must be avoided under any circumstances,” said UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi.
“In addition, returns to Nigeria put a strain on the few existing services and are not sustainable at this time. A new emergency, just as the rainy season is starting, has to be avoided at all costs.”
In particular is concern for children, said UNHCR, adding it is understood several dozen refugees, fearing that they would be returned against their will, escaped and gone into hiding.
The agency has warned large numbers of refugees returning from Minawao camp to conditions “dangerously unprepared to receive them.”
It said insecurity is preventing refugees from returning to their places of origin inside Nigeria.
Many are compelled to end up in Banki, where more than 45,000 internally displaced men, women and children are “already barely accommodated – many without shelter, in conditions of severe overcrowding and without basic facilities such as drinking water, sanitation and health facilities,” UNHCR said.
It has appealed to Cameroon to allow newly arrived Nigerian refugees reach Minawao camp, where some 58,000 are currently being hosted, with another 33,000 living in nearby villages.
It wants Nigeria alongside Cameroon to stop forced returns but instead work out a facilitated voluntary return in line with international standards.
