Sudanese Nuer refugees face difficulties to regain Upper Nile

By Manyang Mayom*

Feb 9, 2006 (RUMBEK) — Sudanese Nuer refugees who are back home from Kenya and Uganda are facing difficulties to regain their mother land in Upper Nile due to lack of transportation.

According to the United Nation Mission In Sudan (UNMIS) Area coordinator Rumbek Lake state statement say on prevision week ago that they are not concerned to transport the Nuer IDP to Upper Nile.

The UN refugee body UNHCR signed on 13 January an agreement with the governments of Kenya and Sudan to begin the voluntary repatriation of Sudanese refugees living in Kenya.

“This gives the message to refugee communities in other countries that one year after the CPA, time has come to seriously think about return,” said Jean-Marie Fakhouri, UNHCR’s director of operations for the Sudan situation.

He further exhorted refugees to return themselves adding “the real builders [of the southern Sudan] will be returnees,”.

Rumbek is under heavy loads for population including IDP who just came from Uganda and Kenya, and others who came in from Juba.

The Government for Lake State have no good capacity to transport the IDP to their respective areas, they government for Lakes State committed to give the IDP food only. The food is supply from World Food Program (WFP) and United Nation higher commission for refugees (UNHCR).

There are some 550,000 southern Sudanese refugees in neighboring countries, and at least five million more Sudanese displaced within their own country.

The UN refugee agency plans to help some 70,000 refugees (including up to 10,000 from Kenya alone) go back to southern Sudan from their exile in neighboring countries before the start of the rainy season in May or June.

Rumbek is now under heavily security patrolling since the government of nation unity (GONU) promise that President Omer Al-bashir due to visited Juba vise Rumbek on Wednesday on 8/2/2006. The IDP remains in the bad condition and this place the local government for Lakes State suffering to find out the solution for Nuer IDPs returnees.

Apart form Kenya, the other countries hosting large numbers of refugees from southern Sudan are Uganda with 204,400, Ethiopia with 90,500, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with 69, 400, and Central African Republic with 36,000 and Egypt with 30, 324.

*By Manyang Mayom is a Sudanese journalist based in Rumbek

(ST)