Q FM Africa's Modern Radio
The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, has appealed to development actors to support Zambia’s local integration program.
Speaking during the hand-over to the Zambian government of infrastructure works worth US$ 758 thousand in Meheba, North-Western Province today, UNHCR Representative to Zambia, Ms Laura Lo Castro, thanked co-operating partners for their support to the local integration programme.
Luara Lo Castro
Ms Lo Castro says UNHCR is pleased to provide these facilities to the Government of Zambia, to assist the Zambian citizens and former refugees living in this resettlement scheme.
She notes that Zambia’s local integration programme illustrates the shift from relief to development and provides a solution to protracted displacement.
She has thanked the Government and people of Zambia for their warm hospitality and exceptional gesture to locally integrate eligible former Angolan and Rwandan refugees.
Ms Lo Castro also thanked the donors, and encouraged them to provide funding for development actors to take over activities under the local integration programme.
The first phase of the local integration programme is a three-year Government-led project aiming at facilitating legal integration of eligible former refugees, ensuring that former refugees and their Zambian hosts – settling in the two designated resettlement schemes- have access to basic social services and maintaining peaceful coexistence with neighboring villages.
Last week, UNHCR handed over similar structures worth US$ 883 thousand in the Mayukwayukwa resettlement scheme.