Refugees could return to South Sudan after rainy season

Visiting a camp in north-western Kenya, the chief of the United Nations
refugee agency on 30 August promised that thousands of people driven from
their homes in South Sudan by two decades of fighting could return to the
region after the rainy season ends in October. "You have the same rights as
I do, the right to a home in your homeland," UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) António Guterres told representatives of the 89,000
refugees in Kenya’s Kakuma camp, on the second to last leg of a 10-day
mission that included stops in Sudan and Chad.

"I am going to be very clear. There will not be any kind of forced return.
Return will only be voluntary. Nobody will be forced to go back. This is
the first guarantee," Mr. Guterres said, pledging that UNHCR would help
some of Kakuma's 66,000 South Sudanese refugees go home as soon as the
rainy season ends. He outlined measures the agency was taking to prepare
for their return, including building schools, de-mining roads and
rebuilding health facilities, and urged the refugees to work with the new
South Sudanese authorities to consolidate peace in their homeland.

Representatives of 5,000 southern Sudanese who arrived in Kakuma after the
signing of the January peace accords told Mr. Guterres they fled militia
fighting that had continued after the agreement was signed. Mr. Guterres
also spoke to a group of 100 refugees from the western Darfur region, scene
of a separate war between rebels, the Government and allied militia, who
walked for nine months to reach the safety of Kakuma.