By NNN-UNNS
Khartoum : More than 100,000 people who fled the decades-long civil war in southern Sudan have returned home to restart their lives in a repatriation programme that began after the signing of a 2005 peace agreement, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday.
“The 100,000 milestone was passed this week as the pace of return convoys picked up from countries neighbouring South Sudan to get refugees home ahead of the rainy season in May, and for those who want to return for the national census on April 5-30,” Ron Redmond, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees announced in Geneva.
Mr. Redmond said that the agency is now helping some 4,500 refugees return each week to southern Sudan – an increase from 3,000 a fortnight ago. By mid-April that figure is expected to jump to 6,000 returnees a week as transport for returnees from Uganda and Ethiopia are increased.
The largest number of refugees is returning from Uganda, with some 2,700 returnees a week and more than 5,000 refugees have returned from Kakuma camp in Kenya this year, with another 2,000 expected to go home in April, according to UNHCR.
Returns from Ethiopia, now running at the rate of 1,200 returnees a week, are expected to result in the closure of two camps there.
A total of 251,000 refugees have returned to Sudan – 100,000 in organized programmes and the rest on their own – since the signing in January 2005 of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended the north-south civil war that killed as many as two million people and displaced 4.5 million others.
The return movements are being organized in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the German agency GTZ, refugee host governments and the Government of Southern Sudan.
In February, UNHCR launched an appeal for $63 million to fund its 2008 southern Sudan operations.
In DARFUR, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced Friday that its critical air transports for aid workers in war-ravaged Darfur will be operational for an additional month.
Some 8,000 relief workers in Darfur use the Humanitarian Air Service (WFP-HAS) monthly to provide much-needed food, water and health care services, but WFP announced last month that it would be grounded by May 31 due to a lack of funds.
With contributions totalling over $6 million, WFP-HAS will not be able to keep 24 helicopters and airplanes in the air until the end of April.
“Thanks to the European Commission, Ireland and other donors, humanitarian work in Darfur and other parts of Sudan will not be interrupted – for the time being,” said Kenro Oshidari, WFP Representative in Sudan.
He voiced hope that more donors will step up, noting that $77 million is needed to keep WFP-HAS, which is vital amid deteriorating security conditions on the roads, running this year.
The service also received $500,000 each from the UN Common Humanitarian Fund and Not On Our Watch, the humanitarian organization founded by actors George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, producer Jerry Weintraub and civil rights lawyer David Pressman.
Insecurity and banditry plague the roads, with WFP announced this week that three drivers of agency-contracted trucks had recently been murdered in Sudan, making the air operation more important than ever.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) expressed relief Friday at the release of four drivers from the State Water Corporation in Sudan’s violence-wracked North Darfur state, who were abducted more than a week ago.
The four have now been reunited with their families, but valuable drilling equipment – which was part of a project to provide clean water for tens of thousands of people in North Darfur – has not been recovered, a United Nations spokesperson said.
Unidentified gunmen hijacked an engineering team of the water corporation, UNICEF’s main counterpart in providing water and sanitation services across northern Sudan, last Thursday night in Um Tajok.
Banditry has become increasingly frequent in Darfur, where in the past five years more than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2.2 million others displaced from their homes because of fighting between rebels, Government forces and allied militiamen.
A hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping force known as UNAMID is being deployed to the region to try to quell the violence and the humanitarian suffering, but the mission is still lacking key capacities and remains far short of the 26,000 uniformed personnel expected when it reaches full capacity.