UN-backed repatriation of Sudanese refugees from Kenya gains momentum

Some 1,300 refugees have so far returned home to southern Sudan from the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya as the United Nations expands its efforts to voluntarily repatriate 350,000 Sudanese who fled two decades of civil war that formally ended in early 2005 with a peace agreement between the Government and rebels.

“We started modestly with the return of 131 refugees last December, and now we hope that we will be able to help 10,000 refugees go home from Kakuma by the end of this year,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) country representative George Okoth-Obbo said of the camp, which shelters more than 70,000 people.

UNHCR has also begun organizing voluntary repatriations from other countries of refuge – the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Uganda and Ethiopia.

“It is a great thing each time a group of refugees return to south Sudan,” said Fortunata Ngonyani, UNHCR community services officer in Kakuma, as she watched the refugees going home. “It acts as an encouragement to others in the camp and gives them confidence in the Sudanese peace process and the voluntary repatriation programme.”

She voiced hope that “information flowing from repatriated refugees back to Kakuma will encourage more refugees to return home.”

Apart from the refugees in neighbouring countries, more than 4 million Sudanese were displaced internally by the decades-long war in the south, which is separate from the conflict still raging in Sudan’s western Darfur region, where more that 2 million people have been uprooted, including more than 200,000 who have fled to eastern Chad.