Dinka to return home from south Darfur next week

April 21, 2006 (NAIROBI) — The first batch of 500 internally displaced Dinkas, one of the ethnic groups of southern Sudan, is scheduled to leave southern Darfur next week for home.

A Sudanese in tribal clothes celebrates the peace treaty signed between Khartoum and SPLM in Nyala, in Sudan’s South Darfur region..

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), which is facilitating the returns, said in a statement on Friday that the vulnerable people from Sudan’s Dinka tribe are part of a larger group of 10,000 who are spontaneously making their way home in Northern Bahr El Gazal region in southern Sudan in the next few weeks.

The IOM said the returns were a result of a request from the Sudanese government and in coordination with the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

“More and more displaced people want to return to Northern BahrEl Ghazal before the onset of the rainy season, but can’t for lackof our resources,” IOM Representative in Juba Louis Hoffmann said.

“By helping them now to get them home, it will be easier for people to reintegrate back into their communities and to restart their lives,” Hoffmann added.

The Dinkas are part of a much larger group of fellow tribes people who were displaced by conflict and drought in southern Sudan to southern Darfur 19 years ago and some were again displaced by the fighting in Darfur in 2003.

Since the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement between Khartoum and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement in January 2005, more and more internally displaced people have made their way home to southern Sudan.

(Xinhua)