Machar calls on residents of UN protection camps to wait before going home

South Sudan’s newly sworn-in First Vice President Riek Machar yesterday called on people living inside UN protection camps to give the government time to create a plan for their return home.

South Sudan’s newly sworn-in First Vice President Riek Machar yesterday called on people living inside UN protection camps to give the government time to create a plan for their return home.

While addressing a crowd of supporters in the Jebel Kujur area of Juba after his arrival and swearing-in yesterday afternoon, Machar said that after the formation of the national unity government the new government will discuss together and with the UN about what should be done.

“Your homes are either destroyed or occupied by other people,” he said.

Machar pointed out that people have lived in congested camps for long and that there are signs of trauma among the people. He said the situation requires intervention by the new government, UN and the international community to repatriate people to their places of origin.

The return process needs a ‘program’, he proposed. Humanitarian access to rural areas should be prioritized, he said, and nation-building will start so that those in the refugees camps in the neighboring countries like Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan will be attracted to return.

“If I said to you know, ‘Come out and go back to your places’ – maybe that place has been taken by somebody else. Maybe somebody is living there. So give us the opportunity that we talk in the national unity government to resolve this issue and then later we’ll come talk to the people in the protection camps,” Machar cautioned. 

Many residents of the UN protection camps, particularly those in Juba, have been living there since December 2013, when the civil war started. Thousands of others in Bentiu arrived during a government offensive in Unity State in mid-2015. 

Some protection camps, known as PoCs, are ethnically mixed – with both Shilluks and Nuers at the Malakal PoC, for example – while at other sites the population is almost entirely ethnically Nuer.

Related:

MP urges govt to intervene over occupation of citizens’ homes in Juba (21 April)