UN resumes refugee repatriation form Kenya to southern Sudan
December 13, 2008 (KAPOETA) — The UN refugee agency resumed operations to repatriate Sudanese refugees from Kenya to southern Sudan.
UNHCR launched its assisted repatriation programme for South Sudan in December 2005 and an estimated 290,000 people have since returned from Kenya and other neighbouring countries.
The refugee agency has helped almost 140,000 of them to return, including 45,000 to Eastern Equatoria.
Eastern Equatoria was one of the hardest hit states during the 21-year-long North-South civil war that ravaged southern areas until the signing of a peace pact in January 2005. But the state bordering Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda is now one of the highest return areas in the south.
The return rate picked up earlier this year before UNHCR suspended returns in July, when the rainy season began. The operation resumed last month. Last week a bus brought 77 refugees from north-west Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp to Kapoeta in Eastern Equatoria.
Next year, UNHCR plans to put even more effort and funding into projects aimed at easing the reintegration of the returnees in South Sudan, where infrastructure and services were devastated by the years of conflict and neglect.
The agency has implemented more than 680 reintegration projects since 2005, including vocational training, rehabilitation and construction of schools and health centres and drilling of water wells.
(ST)