UN repatriates 143000 refugees to South Sudan

May 19, 2007 (NAIROBI) — United Nations-backed repatriation of southern Sudanese refugees has reached 140,000 since the peace agreement between the north and south was signed in 2005, UN humanitarian agency said Saturday.

In a news release the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said about 143,500 refugees have returned so far, more than 61,400 of which were directly helped by either the UN or its partner agencies.

OCHA however, said almost twice as many refugees remain in neighboring countries that fled there following two decades of civil war in the vast region.

The UN agencies said 35,380 refugees have so far this year returned as the south continues to slowly rebuild in the wake of the comprehensive peace agreement that ended one of the continent’s longest civil wars.

The UN aims to repatriate 102,000 refugees in 2007, almost two years since the north-south civil war ended at the start of 2005.

But about 270,000 refugees are still outside Sudan, OCHA reported, living in Uganda, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Egypt.

The UN, the Sudanese government and the government of Southern Sudan have been working to boost returns of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) under a joint plan as part of the comprehensive peace deal which ended the north-south conflict, separate from the fighting that continues to rage in the western region of Darfur between rebel forces, the government and allied militias.

As many as 850,000 IDPs are estimated to have also returned home to central or southern Sudan during the past two years.

(Xinhua)