A year after political trouble in Togo sent 25,000 people fleeing east into Benin, thousands of people remain crammed in tents and temporary shelters in this camp near the border, with few ready to go home.

A whopping 19,870 Togolese refugees are still in Benin, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, around 8,000 living in two refugee camps, the remainder with relatives and host families in the capital Cotonou. Despite often harsh conditions, exiles told IRIN they feared political reprisal should they return.

“We cannot go back,” said Prosper Lokossou, rejecting government calls for the refugees to return. “While the authorities issue these appeals, the arrests continue.” Added Komi Gbodjossou: “They all talk of peace. But how can there be peace without justice.”

Opponents of the 38-year-long regime of late president Gnassingbe Eyadema fled the country amid violence that erupted on the election to the presidency of his son Faure Gnassingbe on 26 April 2005. Several hundred people are believed to have died in the protests and subsequent crackdowns, according to a UN human rights report.

Prime Minister Edem Kodjo last month issued a new plea to refugees to come home but apparently failed to erase fears of reprisal. This was hardly surprising, Amnesty International said in a report issued on Wednesday. “There has been total impunity for 30 years. Until there is an end to impunity and to the non-respect of the rule of law, there will be no political solution or lasting peace in Togo.”

Refugees at this camp 18 kilometres from the border said older and thus more vulnerable refugees had been offered micro-credits by a Togo group earlier this year to ease their return.

UNHCR representative Rafick Saidi said around 50 elderly people had opted to return since March with the backing of Togolese authorities. “I’m happy about this and would like to see more such decisions,” he told IRIN.

In one positive development over the past year, 202 non-accompanied minors have been reunited with their families, of whom 153 have returned to Togo, and the centre set up in the Come refugee camp for these children has now been closed.

In Agame, a vegetable garden project has been launched to help those in the camps to feed themselves, and UNHCR currently is busy preparing the thousands of camp dwellers to cope with the forthcoming onslaught of rain. Battered tents are being replaced - including 144 sheltering vulnerable people - and plastic is being used to reinforce 234 others. Five houses and nine straw shelters too have been built in the village.

And in a bid to ease the psychological trauma, Tunisian psychiatrist Rashid Sherif has launched a scheme under which some 40 refugees have been trained to teach others how to help the exile community. “It’s a kind of neighbourhood scheme that works horizontally rather a medical or social welfare operation that is vertical,” he said.