Anticipating peace, UN agency laying groundwork for refugee returns in southern Sudan

Aid workers from the United Nations refugee agency are in Sudan to prepare for what is expected to be one of the largest refugee repatriation operations this year - pending the signing of a peace agreement between the Government and southern rebel groups.

As negotiators in Kenya continue efforts to hammer out an accord ending two decades of war, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has dispatched an eight-person team of aid workers to Sudan, which is roughly five times the size of France.

Following meetings in the capital Khartoum, the team travelled to Juba and other areas of southern Sudan and met with provincial officials and partner agency representatives to review the needs for a possible repatriation operation.

The 20-year civil war in Sudan has uprooted an estimated 4 million people inside the country, while a further 570,000 are living in neighbouring States as refugees, with the largest numbers in Uganda (223,000), followed by Chad (95,000), Ethiopia (88,000) and Kenya (69,000).

While visiting both Khartoum and southern Sudan last November, High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers told both President Omar Al Bashir and John Garang, the leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), that UNHCR wanted to support the return of refugees.

Mr. Lubbers also warned that the return of refugees must be sustainable, and that considerable help would be needed by a host of partners to establish rehabilitation and reconstruction activities throughout the ravaged country.

Two decades of war and the region's economic collapse have left many parts of Sudan severely impoverished, according to UNHCR. Roads are in extremely poor condition throughout the south, a vast region with only the slow-moving Nile River forming a common artery.