101. Immediate allocations of funds were made to provide emergency assistance to le refugees in the camps, the purchase of food, hospital beds, kitchen utensils and vehicles, including maintenance and running costs, and to improve living conditions for individual refugees in the capital. Contributions in kind in the form of food supplies, tents, blankets, cloth, medicine and an ambulance were made available by voluntary agencies. Trust funds were also made available by Governments for relief supplies and air transport of contributions in kind.
102. UNHCR expended nearly $496,000 in 1977 under the General Programmes for assistance to refugees in Djibouti, mainly for local settlement, while $116,000 in the form of trust funds was expended under the Special Programmes.
103. The World Food Programme will provide food supplies for 4,500 refugees during a six month period from March 1978.
4. Egypt
104. With a new influx of refugees, mainly from Ethiopia, the number of refugees in Egypt increased in 1977 to some 4,500. Other groups included stateless Armenians, refugees of European origin and new African refugee students, many of them from South Africa. UNHCR's expenditures under its General Programmes, totalling over $252,000, again related mainly to local settlement assistance in the form of monthly grants, supplementary and medical assistance, particularly for the aged and newly arrived refugees. Resettlement assistance was provided to a small number of refugees for whom counselling was especially important. Expenditures under the Special Programmes, totalling nearly $174,000, covered mainly educational grants for scholarships at various levels.
5. Ethiopia
105. There was little change in the number of refugees in Ethiopia in 1977, estimated at the end of the year at 10,950, mostly of Sudanese origin. Some are from the northern area of the Sudan and have located at Ganduar, while others are from southern Sudan and have settled in the Gambela area. A small number of individual refugees of various origins settled in and around Addis Ababa.
106. UNHCR's activities in Ethiopia in the first part of 1977 were mainly directed towards completing its assistance to new refugees having arrived in 1976 in the Gambela area, for whom an emergency programme had been launched with the support of WFP and UNICEF in order to meet their immediate needs and promote more durable solutions. By mid-1977 these refugees were harvesting their first crops and could be considered self-sufficient. Administration of the settlement was thus handed
over to the Ethiopian authorities.
107. Efforts were continued throughout 1977 to find an appropriate long-term solution to the problem of the Sudanese refugees residing temporarily at Ganduar, pending their possible voluntary repatriation. However, in view of continuing uncertainty, plans were resumed for their settlement in agriculture on a new site made available by the Ethiopian Government near Bahr Dar in central Ethiopia.
108. The situation of individual refugees in Addis Ababa again posed considerable problems in view of a continued lack of suitable employment and educational opportunities. Those for whom voluntary repatriation was feasible were given
-23-