At least five children have been reunited with their family members in Yei River County of Central Equatoria State after being separated while fleeing violence in Mukaya Payam of Lainya County last year.
The children between nine and 17 years of age were traced and reunited by a local child protection NGO, Institute for Promotion of Civil Society (IPCS) with assistance from the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) last week.
Paul Ohisa, project manager for IPCS told Radio Tamazuj that his organization took care of the children for about a year as they traced their families.
“We have been keeping these five children in interim center care for more than one year and these children lost direction due to the conflict and it took us long to reunite them because their parents ran to Uganda. We thank God they finally returned to Yei and that was why we handed over these children to them. Out of the five children, one is a girl while the rest are four boys,”
James Paul, one of the parents who was reunited with his son expressed happiness for the re-union. James said he fled Mukaya to Uganda refugee camp after a deadly clash between the government and the NAS forces in the area early last year.
He expressed happiness to the protection agency IPCS and the gender ministry for coordinating the safe stay of his son.
“I am too happy though I thought my child was killed during the attack. I am very happy because I spent several months without seeing my child and now I brought him and I want to thank this NGO for this great reunion,” he said.
For her part, Victoria Nasirah, director-general for gender and social development thanked partners for the support towards child protection in the area. Nasirah called on the parents to ensure protection and psychological healing for their children.
“All of us are happy because the best place for a child to be in is the parent’s home so that they are taught with good behaviors and now that these children have been reunited with their parents, the parents need to offer counseling and protection for these children,” Nasirah advised.