Accord allows return of south Sudan’s refugees in Uganda, UN agency says

Some 170,000 southern Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda, representing over half those who fled the bloody, 21-year civil war, are now able to go home after a repatriation agreement was signed today in the Ugandan capital with the United Nations refugee agency.

The agreement, between the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Governments of Uganda and Sudan, allows for the repatriation of Southern Sudanese refugees – some 80 percent of Uganda’s total refugee population – who can return from April onwards providing the current security situation improves.

“The Sudanese need to help themselves to rebuild their country,” said UNHCR’s Sudan operation director Jean-Marie Fakhouri, at the signing ceremony in Kampala. Directly addressing a group of refugees who were present at the ceremony, he added: “You will be the engines of development in Sudan and therefore you are needed to go back.”

Since a peace deal was signed in 2005 ending the conflict between the north and the south of the country, returning home has become an increasing possibility, but there are still 358,000 Sudanese refugees in neighbouring countries, including Kenya, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Egypt, beside Uganda.

Last week, UNHCR suspended its repatriation programme from the DRC and the CAR following flare-ups of fighting in southern Sudan including an attack on a UNHCR compound, in which a guard was killed and another guard and a staff member seriously wounded.

The tripartite agreement signed in Kampala sets the legal framework needed to coordinate, manage and facilitate the voluntary repatriation of refugees who have expressed a desire to go back to their homes, and UNHCR will facilitate the repatriation operations.

The hopes of the Sudanese refugees wishing to return and reintegrate successfully in their home communities, however, could be dashed by the lack of resources for UNHCR’s Sudan repatriation operation, the agency said.

The refugee agency launched an appeal for 2006 for $63 million in order to adequately support voluntary repatriation, return and reintegration operations in south Sudan for refugees but so far only $10.2 million has been received.