The unfortunate Dinka Bor relocation
Editorial by the Khartoum Monitor
Dec 4, 2005 — The aftermath of the ethnic conflict in Western Equatoria Sate is dragging towards another human catastrophe in southern Sudan as hundreds of Bor Dinka IDP’s (Internally Displaced People) are being exited forcibly out of Equatoria to their original domiciles in Junglei State.
Though forcible relocation of IDPs is illegal and considered gross violation of human rights, yet authorities in the government of southern Sudan prefer to keep mute over it since exodus of Bor IDPs from the region offers an easy solution to ethic clashes that erupted earlier in Mundri and Yambio in Western Equatoria and largely aggravated by late and weak intervention from authorities in southern Sudan.
The Bor Dinka are scheduled to cross the Nile over Juba bridge shortly and trek along with their cattle towards Bor over a heavily mined terrain where the worst and fiercest battles have been fought between government forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) during the two decades long civil strife in southern Sudan.
To date, the route between Juba and Bor has not been de-mined and large swathes of land in the return areas of the Bor IDPs still remain hazardous to human passage or settlement. The authorities in southern Sudan government are well aware of this fact and the calculated fateful misfortune a head of the Bor IDPs. The Bor Dinka in their homeward march will serve as human detonators of hidden landmines and antipersonnel ordinances.
Many will loose their lives and limbs and the seriously wounded among them would die due to lack of medical care or medication. As they march, their pregnant women are likely to miscarry or give premature births, the elderly ones would fall sick and die of exhaustion and their frail children would perish of malnourishment and killer in fact disease.
When the Bor IDPs reach their homes, they would have lost half of their cattle due to lack of pasture at this time of the year, while serious starvation would haunt the lucky ones until the next harvest.
Under this unfavourable human situation, why would authorities in southern Sudan government allow this large-scale human disaster to take place? Where are the southern Sudan human rights activists? What about the scores of protection officers in the UN system and the NGOs operating in Sudan whose mandate is to look after the IDPs? The situation of Bor IDPs in Equatoria calls for an urgent solution but their forcible relocation should be the least probability.
UN agencies, NGOs and human rights organizations, with Amnesty International in the forefront, should move to avert this human catastrophe in the making by authorities in southern Sudan or else they should be ready for massive humanitarian interventions in Bor area.