INTERVIEW-Sudan returnees face humanitarian, culture crisis
By Mary Gabriel
NAIROBI, June 1 (Reuters) – An estimated 800,000 southern Sudanese displaced during 21 years of war will return to villages lacking water, roads or housing, many bringing with them Arabic-speaking children, a U.N. expert said on Tuesday.
Sudan’s government and southern rebels agreed protocols last week which lifted the last hurdles to a peace deal after a decade of effort to end a war which broadly pits northern Arab Muslims against southern black animists and Christians.
Bernt Aasen, U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator in the region, said it was crucial to manage the raised expectations of a homecoming for many of the four million people who fled two decades of bitter violence in which two million people died.
“People returning will face major challenges and hardship. It’s still an area that is very much, in terms of aid, based on survival more than development,” Aasen said.
The U.N.’s Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) expects about 800,000 Sudanese to try to return to their villages this year. Rebels in the south say the number could total three million in the longer term.
“It would be difficult to find a village with the roofs that were there 15 years ago still in place,” Aasen said.
About two-thirds of the population already in areas under the control of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in southern Sudan are without an infrastructure to provide basic services, including water, food, housing and schools, he said.
“There are very few roads and many of the roads have landmines, particularly the areas around the urban centres that have been controlled by the government of Sudan,” he said.
SPOILERS
Aasen said the security situation also remains tenuous.
“There are still spoilers out there. We have the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army fighters from Uganda) in Equatoria. We have different militant groups in other parts of the country.”
Amid the danger of continued violence and the prospect of life without the most basic necessities, the return of Sudanese who have lived in government-controlled areas presents cultural challenges. Many of the children who will be returning to shattered villages have never called southern Sudan home.
“There are concerns that those who have been living away for a long time and actually now have Arabic as their mother tongue. We don’t know what the policies will be in terms of schooling of children,” Aasen said.
To prevent a humanitarian crisis, the OLS and its 2,000-some workers in southern Sudan will try to establish water and food points along the routes that returnees, travelling mostly by foot, will take. The aim is to keep them moving and avoid building up new refugee camps along the way.
Aasen said the U.N. will require some $800 million in funds to cover its efforts in southern Sudan and in the western region of Darfur, where the U.N. has called the fallout from a separate conflict the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
“Over the last month, the situation in Darfur has taken all the attention of the international community and, rightly so…but this may actually have a negative impact on the resources flowing into southern Sudan. We may find ourselves in a very difficult humanitarian situation if we are not able to scale up our activities.”