Sudanese refugees in Kenya reluctant to go home

Jan 13, 2006 (NAIROBI) — The UN refugee body UNHCR signed an agreement with the governments of Kenya and Sudan to begin the voluntary repatriation of Sudanese refugees living in Kenya.

Once the peace agreement is signed, Sudanese refugees like these in Kenya’s Kakuma camp will be able to go home. But many say they are reluctant to return home until education, health, and other services can be provided in the southern part of Sudan (UNHCR) .

But many southern Sudanese refugees say they are reluctant to return home until education, health, and other services can be provided in the southern part of Sudan, where infrastructures are limited or nonexistent due to 21 years of conflict.

The UNHCR officials say the first of seven expected tripartite agreements sealed in Nairobi on Thursday paves the way for an estimated 70,000 refugees to return to southern Sudan in the first half of this year.

The agreement was unique as it came exactly one year and three days after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended 21 years of north-south civil war in Sudan signed in Nairobi in January 2005.

“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.

Two decades of warfare had virtually wiped out what little education, health, and other services and infrastructures existed in the impoverished south, leading many in exile to resist returning to their homes.

Speaking after the signing of the tripartite agreement, Sudanese refugees said schools and other services should be provided in southern Sudan before refugees go home.

Southern Sudanese education worker Jacob Deng, who now lives in Canada but works on projects in southern Sudan, said after the signing ceremony in Nairobi that he felt it is not the time to go back.

“My dreams are now to make sure my children get better education than what I had before,” he said.

“To bring my wife and whole family, I feel it is still not secure,” Deng who said he has no immediate plans of returning home, told UNHCR, Kenyan and Sudanese officials, in Nairobi.

However, both Fakhouri and Aleu told the refugees that God would not build southern Sudan but the returnees.

“Yes, it’s true, it’s going to take years before southern Sudan is going to reach the level of services that refugees have had in camps in neighboring countries,” Fakhouri said.

“But it’s going to happen much faster and in a more peaceful way if refugees themselves contribute by returning. The real builders will be returnees,” he added.

After refugees from the Bor area in Jongley state told UNHCR they wanted to go home, UNHCR sent “four people with tents” to establish the first international presence there, Fakhouri said.

This was the magnet, he said, that drew other UN agencies and non-governmental organizations to Bor to work together with returnees to spark development.

Aleu rejected the arguments of some refugees that they cannot return because of lack of basic services and infrastructure.

He said southern Sudanese, especially those who are educated and skilled, have an obligation to go back and fight what he says is the war against poverty and underdevelopment.

According to Aleu, most southern Sudanese who can best develop the south are living in Kenya’s capital Nairobi and urged the Kenyan government to convince southern Sudanese to return to their homeland.

“We are not forcing anyone to go back home, but you have a duty to go back home,” he told Sudanese refugees.

“You need to go and help us in developing these things — the schools and health facilities.”

But Kenya’s Immigration Minister Gideon Konchellah had this to say: “If you don’t want to return, then Kenyans will flood southern Sudan in search of business opportunities created by peace.”

UNHCR says its first steps in southern Sudan were projects such as drilling wells, building schools and repairing health centers to help communities to better welcome returnees.

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.

Fakhouri said more may be able to go home during the second dry season towards the end of the year.

“Now we are moving to the most vital phase of what we have been preparing for since the end of 2003,” said George Okoth-Obbo, UNHCR’s representative in Kenya.

Thursday’s tripartite agreement spells out the responsibilities of the two governments and the UN refugee agency in ensuring that the refugees return to Sudan safely, that their rights and dignity be respected, and that they be reintegrated back into the communities they left behind.

The agreement also sets out the roles and obligations of each of the three partners in helping southern Sudanese refugees go home from Kenya, primarily from Kakuma Camp in northwestern Kenya, home to some 70,000 Sudanese refugees.

All sides agreed, for example, that any returnee should be voluntary, and Sudan pledged to ensure that refugees can return in safety and dignity.

Kenya pledged to continue to safeguard the rights of refugees who decide to stay in Kenya for now.

“People will have to decide on their own when it is time for them to go back,” Konchellah said.

“Of course, they will be provided with information on the conditions of return and will be provided with data and so on, but the decision is up to them,” he said.

“It is incumbent upon us to enable them to reach an informed decision on the return back home. It is also important that we ensure that the return is orderly and it is phased,” Fakhouri said.

In mid-December 2005, in an initial repatriation movement, UNHCR sent a small first group of 131 refugees back to southern Sudan from Kenya.

It is estimated that last year some 70,000 to 80,000 refugees went home to southern Sudan on their own.

Fakhouri said the agreement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo should be signed by the end of this month, to be followed by an agreement with the Central African Republic.

He said agreements are also being negotiated with Uganda and Ethiopia, where some 14,000 Sudanese refugees have asked UNHCR to take them home immediately.

These agreements should also send a signal to international donors about the need for more funding for repatriation, Fakhouri said.

In 2005, UNHCR’s Sudan operations received only 42 million U.S. dollars out of the 76 million dollars needed and according to UNHCR, 63 million dollars is the minimum requirement for funding for the repatriation this year.

More than two million people died and four million others were displaced during the war in Sudan. About 500,000 southern Sudanese fled to Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and four other countries in the region.

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.

(Xinhua/ST)