The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) announced Friday that it has helped more than 100,000 refugees from South Sudan return home under an organized repatriation programme launched in December 2005.
– 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 from April 5-30, UNHCR chief spokesman, Ron Redmond, told journalists in Geneva.
FORLADER UGANDA, KENYA OG ETHIOPIEN
The largest number of refugees is returning from Uganda, with some 2,700 returnees a week.
From Kenya more than 5,000 refugees have returned from Kakuma this year, with another 2,000 expected to go home in April.
Returns from Ethiopia – which has some 35,000 refugees from South Sudan in three camps – are expected to result in the closure of two camps. Returns resumed at the end of last month and are now running at the rate of 1,200 returnees a week.
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 South Sudan.
DE FLESTE VENDER HJEM AF SIG SELV
In all, a total of 251,000 refugees have returned to Sudan – 100,000 in organized repatriations and the rest on their own – since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005 that ended 21 years of civil war between the north and the south of the country. Some 260,000 Sudanese refugees remain outside Sudan’s borders
