Bill Gates gives $10mln to refugee settlement in S. Sudan
Dec 1, 2006 (GENEVA) — The foundation created by Microsoft Corp. cofounder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, has donated $10 million (EUR7.6 million) for emergency relief work in southern Sudan, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.
The funds will be used for projects to help hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the volatile region, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement.
A January 2005 peace deal ended 21 years of civil war between the north and the south, but there have been violations of the truce. That conflict was separate from the violence in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
The UNHCR said the money donated by the Gates Foundation would cover basic health care, education, water and sanitation needs over a 28-month period, benefiting more than 400,000 internally displaced people and Sudanese refugees coming home from neighboring countries.
“While the 2005 peace agreement has paved the way for the possible repatriation of hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people, south Sudan is in ruins and the lack of infrastructure poses an enormous threat to the sustainability of those returns,” UNHCR chief Antonio Guterres said. “This grant is crucial to their successful reintegration.”
Heavy fighting between government forces and former rebels broke out in the south Sudan town of Malakal earlier this week, killing more than a dozen people in one of the most serious breaches of the peace agreement, but calm was restored Thursday with the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers.
(AP)