UN to help South Sudanese return from DR Congo
Sept 12, 2006 (GENEVA) — The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today announced that it will soon operate a convoy to help some 400 South Sudanese refugees begin their journey home from the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The cross-border, voluntary returns come in the wake of January’s tripartite agreement between UNHCR, Sudan and the DRC allowing the repatriation of refugees in both countries, some of whom have lived abroad for decades.
Agency spokesman Ron Redmond told a press briefing in Geneva today that many Sudanese refugees eager to return home have already made the trip on their own.
Earlier this year, UNHCR organized “go-and-see visits” for community leaders to see their villages, assess living conditions and meet with their home communities and the local authorities.
Tomorrow’s convoy will depart from the Aba area of the DRC’s Oriental Province, where most South Sudanese refugees in the DRC are housed, Mr. Redmond said.
UNHCR staff in South Sudan will provide returning refugees with basic assistance, including construction materials, household items and a three-month food ration supplied by the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
Regular returns from Aba are expected to continue at a rate of one convoy a week during the coming months.
Earlier this year, UNHCR organised several return movements to South Sudan from the Aru area, also in north-eastern DRC, which brought home more than 1,600 refugees. DRC still hosts some 13,000 Sudanese refugees, many of them receiving humanitarian assistance from UNHCR and its partners.
“We have been repatriating refugees from neighbouring countries since the end of last year, starting with Kenya and then followed by Ethiopia, Uganda, the DRC and the Central African Republic. So far, we have assisted 13,000 refugees to return to South Sudan.”
There are still 350,000 Sudanese refugees in camps in neighbouring countries – some for as long as two decades – and 4 million internally displaced persons from South Sudan, half in the south itself and half in the Khartoum and Kassala areas.
In addition to those repatriated by UNHCR, an estimated 100,000 refugees from neighbouring countries returned to South Sudan on their own before or soon after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005 that ended 21 years of war.
(UNHCR/UNNS)