MAURITANIANS REPATRIATED FROM SENEGAL SURPASS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 NOUAKCHOTT 000313

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/30/2019
TAGS: PGOV PREF SOCI ECON MR
SUBJECT: MAURITANIANS REPATRIATED FROM SENEGAL SURPASS
10,000

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Dennis Hankins for reasons 1.4 (b) and
(d).


1. (U) Summary: The cumulative number of Mauritanian refugees
repatriated from Senegal surpassed 10,000 people in April.
There are approximately 10,000 more refugees that remain in
Senegal that have expressed their intent to return to
Mauritania. To date, all of the refugees have returned to
the Brakna and Trarza regions. UNHCR expects to conduct
future convoys to the Gorgol, Guidimaka and Assaba regions.
UNHCR has changed implementing partners, replacing local NGO
ALPD with the German development agency (GTZ) and Italian NGO
Intersos. This change has significantly improved UNHCR's
ability to provide services to the returnees. Many
challenges remain, including access to water, education,
healthcare and sanitation. The vast majority of returnees
still have not received their national identity cards,
limiting their mobility. UNHCR continues to work on this
issue and believes that progress is being made. UNHCR will
end its formal repatriation program June 30, but will remain
in Mauritania at least through the end of 2009 to provide
support and reintegration assistance to the returnees. End
Summary.

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RETURNEES SURPASS 10,000
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2. (SBU) UNHCR Senegal has received over 20,000 voluntary
repatriation forms (VRF) from Mauritanians living in Senegal
indicating their intention to return to Mauritania. To date,
a total of 12,359 VRFs have been approved by Mauritanian
authorities. Many of the VRFs that have been submitted to
Mauritanian authorities have yet to be approved. UNHCR
Mauritania representative Anne-Marie Deutschlander-Roggia
said that some of the VRFs had gone missing, although it was
unclear where in the chain of custody they had been lost. Of
the 353 VRFs that have been rejected to date, most were
rejected due to incomplete information. Deutschlander-Roggia
said that she is pushing to set a deadline for the Ministry
of Interior to approve the remaining VRFs so that UNHCR can
complete the repatriation. The number of Mauritanian
refugees returning from Senegal surpassed 10,000 people after
the most recent convoy April 23. Since the repatriation
began in January 2008, all of the refugees have returned to
the Brakna (7596 people) and Trarza (2603 people) regions in
southwestern Mauritania.


3. (U) UNHCR is prepared to repatriate refugees to the
Gorgol, Guidimaka and Assaba regions, but
Deutschlander-Roggia stated that UNHCR still "needs
refugees." In most cases, the VRFs have been approved for
all but one or two members of the village that intend to
return to these regions. The villagers are insisting on
waiting until the whole village can be repatriated together.
Deutschlander-Roggia said that UNHCR is working to clear
these last few VRFs so that UNHCR can proceed with
repatriations to these regions. She noted her frustration
that refugees were telling UNHCR when they would be
repatriated instead of the other way around. She added that
many people slated to return to the Gorgol area are
well-established in Senegal and she questioned how many
people really intended to return. Because of the smaller
than predicted number of refugees now anticipated to return
to the Gorgol, UNHCR has closed its office in Kaedi (Gorgol)
and moved its operations to its regional office in Boghe
(Brakna). There are also questions regarding what to do with
the approximately 1700 refugees that stated that they want to
return to Nouakchott. Mauritanian authorities question how
many of them actually came from Nouakchott. It is unlikely
that many of the refugees were actually born in Nouakchott,
even if they were living there when they were forced to flee
to Senegal. Deutschlander-Roggia said that the refugees
returning to urban areas may be required to at least pass
through their native villages, or the village where their
parents were born, before continuing on to Nouakchott.

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NEW IMPLEMENTING PARTNERS
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4. (C) UNHCR Mauritania has replaced local NGO ALPD with the
German development agency (GTZ) and Italian NGO Intersos as
its implementing partners. In a courtesy call with
Ambassador soon after her arrival in August 2008,
Deutschlander-Roggia said that she was not satisfied with
ALPD as the implementing partner and was looking to replace
it with a partner with greater capacity. Comment: It was
clear from the beginning of the repatriation that ALPD did

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not have the necessary capacity to carry out the work
required of it by UNHCR. Much of the work that it was
supposed to do was not being carried out in a timely fashion
and there were questions about mismanagement. Unfortunately,
UNHCR continued to rely on ALPD in spite of the widely
acknowledged problems for many months. It was only when
Deutschlander-Roggia arrived in Mauritania that UNHCR took
action to finally find a new implementing partner. End
comment. Deutschlander-Roggia stated that she was very
pleased so far with the GTZ and Intersos. UNHCR also signed
an agreement with local NGO AMDH, a well-respected human
rights organization. AMDH will be in charge of implementing
protection monitoring activities in returnee areas.

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NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION CARDS
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5. (SBU) As of March 2009, UNHCR reports that less than 200
national identity cards had been delivered to the nearly
10,000 returnees. The Government of the Islamic Republic of
Mauritania (GIRM) has made better progress on birth
certificates, delivering over 2000 to date. UNHCR's figures
on national identity cards differ significantly from the
GIRM's, which claims that 1360 identity cards have been
issued. The difference may be in part semantic. While the
GIRM may have issued 1360 cards, they may be sitting with
local authorities who have not yet actually delivered them to
the individual returnees. The national identity cards are
extremely important for the returnees because without them,
they have difficulty traveling internally and cannot pass
police checkpoints.


6. (C) While the vast majority of refugees still have not
obtained civil documents, Deutschlander-Roggia said that she
thought the situation had finally been taken care of. She
has been meeting regularly with Ministry of Interior
officials to work on the issue. She said that she has been
very direct with the officials, telling them that if they do
not issue the identity cards in a timely manner, UNHCR could
pull out of the repatriation operation and then the operation
will fail. She said her blunt statements seemed to get their
attention and she believes that progress is being made on the
situation.

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HOUSING
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7. (U) UNHCR has stopped providing permanent housing to the
refugees and has begun providing them with the materials to
construct semi-permanent shelters. The small concrete block
houses that UNHCR began building for the first returnees were
problematic from the beginning. The returnees did not like
the houses, complaining that they were inappropriate for
multi-generation families and were not suitable for the
climate. They were also very expensive to build. As the
returnees tended to be disproportionately women, children and
old men, there was not enough labor to build the houses.
UNHCR began relying on ALPD to build the houses when the
returnees were either unable or unwilling to build them
themselves, leaving many returnees in UNHCR-provided tents
for months. UNHCR has since switched to providing materials
to the returnees to build their own semi-permanent shelters
with assistance from the implementing partners. The shelters
consist of a concrete base, a concrete block wall about three
feet high with a metal screen on top, and a corrugated metal
roof. The semi-permanent shelters give the returnees more
room and are more appropriate for Mauritania's desert
climate. They are also less expensive and can be built much
faster.

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WATER
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8. (U) In the Trarza region, all of the returnee sites have
permanent water sources. The situation in the Brakna region
is more precarious as eleven sites still do not have
permanent access to water. UNHCR continues to deliver water
to these sites by truck, making up to five deliveries to each
site per day. Work is already underway at several of the
sites to dig wells and build water towers. Intersos has
provided donkey carts for other sites to be able to bring
water in from neighboring villages that already have
hydraulic installations. UNHCR is heavily burdened by the
continued need to deliver water by truck to eleven different
sites. UNHCR Mauritania only has 12 trucks, only five of
which are currently working (it is awaiting the delivery of

NOUAKCHOTT 00000313 003 OF 003


replacement parts in order to repair the other seven trucks).
The small number of working trucks and continuing need to
deliver water are hampering UNHCR's ability to conduct
repatriations.

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HEALTH, NUTRITION AND EDUCATION
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9. (U) The GIRM has been doing regular nutritional screenings
and providing nutritional supplements at returnee sites. The
GIRM's latest survey from March 2009 shows that approximately
10% of returnee children suffer from malnutrition. Intersos
continues to deliver food provided by WFP to returnee sites.
A government-run mobile health unit visits the various
returnee sites on a monthly basis to provide free
consultations and treatments. However, most of the sites
still do not have any clinics or healthcare providers. In
urgent situations, the returnees must travel to the nearest
town to obtain care. Sanitation remains a problem at many of
the sites. UNHCR recently ordered 2,041 kits to construct
latrines to address the situation. At several sites, none of
the children are attending school. Part of the problem is
raising awareness among parents about the need to send their
children to school, but efforts are hampered by a lack of
classrooms and teachers. UNHCR continues to work with the
national refugee agency ANAIR and the National Office of
Education to find solutions.

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POLITICAL WILL FOR THE REPATRIATION
--------------


10. (C) Deutschlander-Roggia says that she believes the GIRM
really does want the repatriation to succeed and is committed
to it, in spite of the coup. She stated that while the GIRM
often did not move as fast as she would prefer, she was still
receiving good cooperation in the field. She said that she
was not sure where ANAIR was getting its financing from. The
GIRM had originally made an appeal to donors for $62 million
in early 2008 to finance programs to reintegrate the
returnees, but it is unclear how much it has actually
received to date. Deutschlander-Roggia made clear that UNHCR
had no intention of providing financing to ANAIR. To date,
ANAIR's activities remain fairly modest, limited to
distribution of livestock to some families and providing
vocational training. There have not been any medium or large
scale development activities designed to benefit the entire
community. While almost all families have received land
titles to build their houses, the issue of large pieces of
land for cultivation has not yet been resolved.
Deutschlander-Roggia reiterated that anytime UNHCR runs into
trouble with GIRM authorities, she reminds them that if they
do not take certain actions, the repatriation program will
fail. She noted that this has been a very effective method
for her.

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End of Repatriation
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11. (U) UNHCR has set a firm date of June 30 for the end of
the formal repatriation program. UNHCR will likely remain in
country through the end of the year providing support
services to the returnees. Deutschlander-Roggia said that
she is still trying to figure out exactly what type of
support UNHCR will provide to returnees who decide to come
back on their own after the formal repatriation program ends.
She said that she did not want to punish returnees for
coming back on their own. However, it would be a logistical
nightmare for UNHCR to try to identify and locate individual
families returning to different sites and to provide them
with the same services that the returnees participating in
the formal repatriation received.

HANKINS