KAMPALA, Aug 18 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Uganda said it had agreed to a request from the United States to take in temporarily 2,000 refugees from Afghanistan fleeing after the Taliban takeover.
The East African nation has long experience in receiving people escaping conflict and currently hosts about 1.4 million refugees, mostly from South Sudan.
“The request was made by the US government to HE (President Yoweri Museveni) and he has given them an OK to bring 2,000 (Afghan) refugees to Uganda,” Esther Anyakun Davinia, Uganda’s junior minister for relief, disaster preparedness, and refugees, said.
“They have requested us to host 2,000 refugees. We are expecting them to be brought in shifts of 500. So, UNHCR secured Imperial hotels in Entebbe as a transit center for them to first of all arrive and be screened,” she said.
“They are going to be here temporarily for three months before the US government resettles them elsewhere.”
It was unclear when they would start arriving.
U.N. High Commission for Refugees Uganda representative Joel Boutroue also confirms the decision to receive the Afghan refugees.
“We welcome that of course. And again, the generosity of the Ugandan government. And what we are doing, is we are preparing in terms of, with the office of the Prime Minister receiving them at the airport, lodging them. And then there will be all this, screening, testing. And then we see the next step, depending on what, for example Ugandan government and maybe other governments, in particular the U.S. government want to do, if ever they want to resettle them,” he said.
Albania and Kosovo have also accepted a US request to temporarily take in Afghan refugees. — NNN-AGENCIES
