[Picture from same article - copyright irinnews.org,
08/01/2013 – Image Anna Jefferys/IRIN]
08.01.2013. Nearly 25,000 Mauritanian
refugees who had sheltered in Senegal for two decades after fleeing violence in
1989, have returned home since 2008, but despite extensive efforts to resettle
them in their original villages many lack ID papers and/or access to their old
farmland.
Tens of thousands of black Mauritanians
fled ethnic killings carried out by security forces in the early 1990s. Some
fled to Mali but most to Senegal.
Aliou Moussa So is head of a returnee
community of 73 families in PK6 village, 6km from Rosso in southern Mauritania
near the Senegalese border. Like most of the returnees, he fled in 1989 and
returned in 2008 when the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) started to repatriate
refugees.
Most of the returnees were originally from
PK6 though when they fled it was called “Wellingara”, loosely meaning “a nice
place to visit” in their local language Peulhar.
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