Japan has pledged $1.36 million in emergency grants to support Eritreans who have suffered as a result of their country's two-year conflict with Ethiopia over a border dispute, the Foreign Ministry said.
The money will be provided via the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to help those in Eritrea who have been forced out of their homes since widespread fighting broke out in May, the ministry said Tuesday.
According to the UNHCR, some 90,000 people -- mostly women, children and the aged -- were forced to flee to Sudan, and many more to other neighboring countries. The government of Eritrea has announced that 1.1 million of its people have become refugees.
Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a comprehensive peace agreement Dec. 12 in Algiers, but many Eritreans are apparently unable to return home because major cities and farmlands near the border with Ethiopia have been heavily damaged in the latest fighting.
Grants for Angolans
Japan will provide $550,000 in emergency grants to help Angolan refugees from the civil war in the strife-torn country, the Foreign Ministry said.
The money will be given to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees to be used for purchasing everyday goods and funding community services and transportation for the refugees, the ministry said Tuesday.
Since Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975, an ongoing internal conflict is estimated to have created 2 million refugees -- or about one-sixth of the country's population, the ministry said.
Japan is responding to calls made this year by the UNHCR for the international community to provide humanitarian emergency aid to the country, where fighting restarted in 1998.