Nineteen children who had been separated from their parents for almost two years have been reunified with their families in Akobo in Jonglei. The children were living in the UN Protection of Civilians (PoC) site in Bor.

The children are aged between 3 and 16 years and come from seven different families. They were separated from their families during heavy fighting in December 2013. A United Nations helicopter brought them back home this week.

Mary Nyakang Chuol was overjoyed by the return of her children. “Every day we are thinking that out children have been killed or hurt... Now they are here with us,” she said. “I want to share this story with the people from all countries. We are the people who are suffering from this war - it is the small people who suffer; they just want peace. Children and the elderly and vulnerable people are the ones being violated.”

NGO Save the Children, which facilitated the reunification, announced that the successful reunion of children and families came after a detailed process to verify that the missing children would be reunited with the right families.

In a press statement yesterday, Save the Children Country Director Peter Walsh said, “It’s an absolute delight to think that 19 children who could have lost contact with their families are now safely in the arms of their loving parents.”

Walsh explained that his organization has a team working on family tracing and reunification. He says the whole process from registering a separated child to reuniting him or her with his family can take between 6-8 months on average. This is partly because relatives may be living in very remote areas, he noted.

Save the Children says that it has successfully reunited 2,398 children with their families since the beginning of 2014, but there are still 8,609 active cases of children who are unaccompanied, separated or missing.