Return of displaced to southern Sudan could cause chaos
Oct 12, 2005 (GENEVA) — The return of thousands of displaced people to southern Sudan could cause chaos unless conditions there improve rapidly, a U.N. official said Wednesday.
The United Nations is not encouraging people to return now that the southern Sudan civil war is over, but it is urgently trying to step up protection for the 500,000 Sudanese expected to head home in the next six months, said Dennis McNamara, who heads the U.N. humanitarian office’s internal displacement division.
The United Nations is asking for US$48 million (A40 million) to help provide shelter along the way for those traveling across the country by bus, barge and foot, McNamara said.
“People are returning to towns and villages that often have no schools, no health clinics, few roads and little security,” he said.
McNamara said the situation could become “chaotic” if the Sudanese government and international donors do not act immediately to provide public services, warning that south Sudan’s tenuous peace deal could unravel.
Sudan’s new national unity Cabinet was sworn in last month after a peace deal ended over two decades of conflict between the Muslim Arab-led government in Khartoum and the mostly Christian and animist south, led by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. The conflict displaced some 4 million people, more than any other conflict in the world, he said.
The accord provided for an autonomous south with its own army, national power and wealth sharing, religious freedom and a new constitution during a six-year interim period. Now, former southern rebels sit on the Cabinet and one is a vice president. But after those six years, the 10 southern states will hold a referendum on independence.
McNamara called on Sudan to begin using its oil wealth to improve the humanitarian situation in the south, especially as the dry season begins in November.
“The government has not done enough,” he said. “No funding has been made available and there is no functioning treasury in place.”
Juba, the capital of the south, could easily suffer the same fate as Khartoum, where hundreds of thousands have settled in “slums and squalid settlements around the city,” leading to widespread disease and violence, McNamara said.
The U.N. is working hard to get government officials to improve conditions there, but McNamara conceded that it remained difficult to “protect and support without encouraging more to come.”
The same dilemma applies to food aid, where U.N. food programs are doing their best to feed returnees. But the problem will not be solved until people in Sudan are able to break “this cycle of dependency” and provide for their own nourishment, McNamara said.
Last month, the World Food Program said it was concerned about growing malnutrition in parts of southern Sudan, where it was trying to provide for 1.3 million people. But the Rome-based U.N. agency said it had to scale back deliveries because its emergency operations had a shortfall of 41 percent, or US$124 million, so far this year.
(AP)