“The residents’ arrival in Albania is an encouraging first step in the relocation of the group of 210 residents the Albanian government has agreed to receive,” said the UN Special Representative for the Secretary-General and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), Martin Kobler.

More than 3,000 residents, most of them members of a group known as the People’s Mojahedeen of Iran, are temporarily housed in a transit facility called Camp Liberty – also know as Camp Hurriya – while the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) carries out a process to determine their refugee status.

Kobler said that the departure of the group from Iraq is in accordance with the memorandum of understanding of 25 December 2011, which foresees the relocation of the residents to third countries. “I thank the Government of Albania and encourage other Member States to come forward and to receive residents in their countries as well.”

Following the original offer by the Albania Government to assist in the resettlement, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he “unequivocally supports” Kobler’s efforts “to courageously and creatively, in exceptionally difficult circumstances, help resolve this situation.”

In addition, in his recent report about the situation in Iraq, Ban urged those who express support for the residents of Camp Hurriya and the remaining residents of another camp, New Iraq, to stop spreading insults and falsehoods about Kobler and instead help to promote a durable solution.

Following Albania’s announcement, the Government of Germany offered humanitarian admission for approximately 100 residents of the camp.

In 2003 and 2008, thousands of people from CAR were forced to flee their homes because of political instability and armed conflict. Many of them have since been living in camps in the Chadian cities of Yaroungou and Moula, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“Our hope is that the relocation will be a welcome break for the refugees of Yaroungou and Moula where heavy seasonal rains have been causing extensive damage over the past three years,” UNHCR’s chief spokesperson, Melissa Fleming, said in a press briefing in Geneva.

“In the Moula camp, some 260 hectares of farmland are currently flooded. At Yaroungou, the floods have destroyed 85 per cent of the maize and rice crops,” she added. “Stockpiles of food and seeds have also been wiped out as most of Chad is affected by flooding.”

Since Monday, when the operation started, UNHCR has moved 1,687 refugees in seven convoys to a new site in Paris-Sara. Ms. Fleming said the refugee agency is organizing convoys twice a day and expects to complete the relocation by the end of the month, assuming new rainfalls do not hamper movement.

According to UNHCR, Chad currently hosts more than 300,000 refugees settled in 18 camps. Twelve of the camps are in the country’s east and host some 260,000 Sudanese refugees originating from Darfur. The other six camps, in the south, house some 60,000 Central Africans. In addition to the refugees, there are 83,000 internally displaced Chadians staying in camps in the east and also receiving UNHCR assistance.

“Despite the immense humanitarian needs in Chad, it is one of our least-funded operations with only 25 per cent of our budget of $177 million received so far,” Fleming said.

She noted that UNHCR estimates that $3.5 million are needed to rehabilitate damaged camp infrastructure such as shelters, schools, water points, health centres, playgrounds, latrines and drainage systems.