South Sudan’s Ambassador to Kenya, Chol Mawut Unguec Ajongo, a lawyer by profession, worked with UNHCR in Egypt after fleeing Sudan as a refugee. He helped resettle many of his then-countrymen and refugees from other countries to third countries.
Radio Tamazuj sat down with him and sounded him out about student political activism, education, life as a refugee, diplomacy, and his achievements as a career foreign service officer, among other things.
Below are edited excerpts:
Q: Can you kindly introduce yourself to our readers and listeners?
A: Welcome, Radio Tamazuj. My name is Chol, but I am popularly known as Chol Ajongo, and I am the South Sudan Ambassador to Kenya.
Q: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?
A: I was born in Aweil in Northern Bahr el Ghazal State in a place called Barmayen. It is a village located 45 miles north of Wau and 36 miles south of Aweil town.
I went to primary school in the same area in the mid-1970s and later went to Aweil Intermediate School in the early 1980s. After intermediate, I was supposed to go to Nyamlel Secondary School, which had just opened in Aweil opened in Aweil but then the civil war started. One of my cousins in high school at the time in Busseri advised me to instead go to Wau. So, I joined Wau Day Secondary School in August 1985 but only spent six months there.
In January 1986, as part of student activism, we had demonstrations against Dr. Hassan Abdallah al-Turabi when he was visiting Wau, so schools were closed, and I decided to go to Khartoum. That is how I ended up going to al-Gazira State.
Q: What was your high school experience in the north after leaving Wau?
When I got to the Rufaa High School in al-Gazira State, I did not want to repeat the second year of secondary school because I was in a hurry and wanted to join the movement (SPLM/A). My auntie, who was a teacher, wanted me to repeat the class but I insisted on going to the third year because I wanted to sit for the Sudan School Certificate so that I could come back to Southern Sudan. That was the whole idea.
Q: So you were already actively involved in political activism in high school?
A: Yes, a lot as a student.
Q: What did you study at the university and how was life?
A: After sitting for the Sudan School Certificate, I was admitted to the Faculty of Law at Al Neelain University. However, we lost one year because when the Government of Sudan recaptured Torit from the SPLM/A, the whole university was closed to mobilize students to join the Mujahidin.
I graduated in 1996, sat the Bar examination in 1998, and passed, but due to my political views, I could not work for the government. I did not see myself sitting in the court or working for the legal system that punished my people for brewing alcohol for survival and looking after their families.
When things became tough, some students were advised to leave because it was no longer safe so I decided to leave Sudan.
Q: Where did you go?
A: Going southward was out of the question because if you flew from Khartoum to Aweil, you would be killed. At the time, they used to kill intellectuals. So, the only open road was to Egypt because it is part of the Arab world, and the government in Khartoum believed dissidents could not carry out activities against them from there.
On arrival in Egypt in 1999, I went to the UNHCR and applied, and I was immediately taken in. After six months, I was recruited by the UNHCR office.
I had a little boy at the time and my wife was expecting a baby. With the UNHCR, when your status changes as a family, you have to update your file. So, I went to UNHCR to update my file because I had a new family member. The lady in charge of the durable solution department, an Egyptian lawyer, went through my file and realized that I was a lawyer who spoke other languages apart from Arabic. She took my file to the protection officer who was French.
She told the bosses that there is a young Sudanese lawyer who spoke many languages and it would be good to recruit him. When I returned the next morning, she asked me if I was willing to work for UNHCR. I said yes, and she took me to the protection officer, who asked if I could start work the next day. So, that is how I got recruited into the UNHCR office in Cairo.
Q: How long did you work and live in Egypt before you also relocated to Canada?
A: I worked for exactly two years and I was offered training at the American University or to Geneva for the Human Rights Convention, but a Canadian lady working in UNHCR’s legal department advised me to consider going to Canada.
So she insisted that I go to Canada and even chose the city I went to. That is how I ended up going to Canada.
I went to Canada in October 2001, and in 2002 I became the chairperson of the SPLM chapter in Ottawa. I held the position for two consecutive terms 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005.
In 2006, I got a job with Immigration Canada and was handling refugees coming in, but I resigned later that year.
Q: How long did you live in Canada before returning to Africa?
A: I returned to Khartoum in 2007 as part of the SPLM component, and in late 2007, I was deployed to the Netherlands in The Hague as the Deputy Ambassador of Sudan and served there until 2011.
Q: So when were you promoted to full ambassador?
A: As foreign officers in the ministry of foreign affairs in Khartoum, we were supposed to be promoted, but because they knew South Sudan was going to vote for independence, they never acted on our promotions.
When South Sudan became independent, I went back to Juba in 2012 and worked at the foreign ministry. In the same year, I was promoted to the ambassador at the base.
As an independent country, we started opening embassies and the Foreign Minister Nhial Deng deployed me to London as the second man but I was the first to go and establish the embassy in May 2012. My senior, the head of mission, Amb. Sebit Alle, was a very nice person, very technocratic in terms of skills and we learned a lot from him.
In 2016, I was sent to Nairobi, Kenya as a full ambassador.
Q: What would you say have been your major achievements as an ambassador?
A: It is hard to rate yourself as an ambassador or a civil servant. Usually, there are criteria for rating performance, and an ambassador or a diplomat cannot be rated in isolation.
When I came in, there had been predecessors; of course, they did a lot of work. So, what we do is either consolidate the existing bilateral relations, try to improve on them, or try to maintain them to a certain level. Kenya, for us, is strategic because it was our refuge when we lost Ethiopia in the 1990s and we have had a huge presence of our people in Kakuma Refugee Camp. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was also negotiated and signed here and many of our senior people still have their families here.
So, in terms of achievements, it is very hard for me to rate myself and quantify that I have done so much but probably the South Sudanese community here can rate.
As an embassy, we handle both bilateral and multilateral relations and issues. Kenya hosts the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN-Habitat and we have to deal with them.
Regarding free movement, one of the things that we can claim to have achieved is that we managed to, at least during my tour of duty, waive the visas.
As part of the East African Community (EAC) program, people have to move freely and it was a bit tough to achieve this, but we managed to make sure that Kenyans and South Sudanese can travel visa-free.
Q: How many South Sudanese refugees are present in Kenya?
A: As an embassy, we have not conducted a census of South Sudanese refugees for several reasons and we have it in the program but we have a rough estimation and I do not want to give you a false figure. By definition, based on international conventions, five criteria qualify someone as a refugee; they have to have a well-founded fear and have left their country for reasons of persecution, because of colour, because of religion, and political opinion.
Coming to our people in Kakuma Refugee Camp, I know some people may have well-founded reasons to stay there but I also know quite a number of them are there because they have access to services Like health and education. The reason for saying this as an ambassador sitting here is that I know that if you are a refugee and you have a well-founded fear that your government is prosecuting you, you cannot afford to come to the embassy.
I know some refugees who come here (embassy), get travelling documents, travel to Juba, come back, and go back to the refugee camp.
So, some of these people do not meet the true criteria of being refugees because if you are a real refugee, you cannot come to the embassy.
Q: Ambassador, South Sudanese students on scholarship in Egypt, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia have in the past protested at the embassies there due to lack of school fees. Have you had a similar experience in Kenya?
A: In Kenya, we have not experienced that because we never had government scholarships in huge numbers. Egypt gives scholarships, and this is what we call cultural influence. If you go to school in Italy, you speak Italian and become culturally affiliated with Italians. That is the whole idea.
So coming to that question, we never had that issue because Kenya has been offering us a lot. Still, most of the students here were either born here or are here with their families, went to school here from childhood, and continued until university. So, they are not government-sponsored.
So, what is happening in other places is unfortunate and the students also should be able to understand the situation in the countries they are in and know that they are not being neglected but that there are practical reasons because of the war and resultant financial difficulties the Government of South Sudan is facing.
Q: How many South Sudanese are in prison in Kenya?
A: I know of three cases of South Sudanese who are in prison and this is a conversation going on between us and the Kenyan authorities on this. As a lawyer, to have a law case, there must be certain principles that guide when crimes are committed, depending on what we call jurisdiction. When a crime happens in Kenya, Kenyan jurisdiction qualifies to try the case. When you have thousands of South Sudanese in a locality, there must be cases of course.
So, we have a few cases where police interact with some individuals and young people during the weekends and we want to address them. When we get phone calls that there is somebody in prison or somebody in police custody, we have officers who always go there and resolve them.
There are three major cases I know of, but because of legal technicalities, I am not comfortable talking about them because they are in court.
Q: There was a case where five South Sudanese students were set ablaze last year. How did you handle it?
A: That case of Nakuru was a tough one, and I think I had an interview with you (Radio Tamazuj) at some point about it. I met the Kenyan foreign and interior cabinet secretaries at the time and they promised to handle the issue and they kept their word. The interior minister said the matter was purely a crime, and the perpetrators were arrested. The matter is now before the court.
Q: What is the biggest challenge you faced as an ambassador to Kenya?
A: It was Covid-19 because although we never had significant cases of people falling sick in Kenya, we were receiving a lot of evacuations of our senior cadres with pre-existing medical conditions from South Sudan, yet there was restricted movement. Usually, when we have people referred for medical treatment, we are expected to be there for them.
It was a tough time because we lost, not as a result of Covid-19 but other medical conditions, several people. It was very difficult because we had to provide normal consular services and also help our people who were in distress. After all, they had lost loved ones. Due to movement restrictions, we could not even go to condole with bereaved families.
Q: What is your New Year message to South Sudanese domiciled in Kenya?
A: When you spend twelve months in good health, that by itself is a good thing. I wish all South Sudanese, especially in Kenya, good health in the New Year.
Thank you very much, Radio Tamazuj, and I also wish you and your team a Happy New year.