KAMPALA, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- An eight-month biometric verification exercise of refugee numbers in Uganda has registered 1.1 million refugees and asylum seekers, a drop from the 1.4 million refugees that were previously estimated to be in the east African country.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in a joint statement with the Ugandan government on Monday attributed the drop in the number to among others death or spontaneous return of refugees to their countries of origin.
The statement also said the verification exercise cleaned up cases where there were multiple registration.
"There were also some cases of multiple registrations by refugees at the height of the emergency influxes of South Sudanese refugees between mid-2016 and mid-2017, when registration systems were sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer number and speed of arrivals. These cases were identified and removed from the database," the statement said.
Progressively, as the verification was completed in refugee settlements, new food assistance collection procedures were rolled out by the UN World Food Program, UNHCR and government.
"Under the new system, each person receiving assistance is confirmed against biometric data collection in the verification exercise. These procedures mitigate the risk of fraud, ensuring that assistance is well managed and provided only to verified, eligible refugees and asylum seekers," the joint statement said.
Uganda and UNHCR ordered for the audit process in March this year following allegations that some senior government officials mismanaged funds meant to support refugees and inflated the number of refugees in the country.
The UNHCR figures then showed that Uganda hosted about 1.4 million refugees, mainly from South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.
