The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) is continuing an operation to relocate thousands of people from one protection site in Juba to another, saying up to 400 people are moving per day.

Derk Segaar, the chief of the Recovery, Reintegration and Peacebuilding Unit in the United Nations Mission, says people are responding well to the relocation exercise.

The UN-run Miraya FM quotes him as saying a maximum of 400 people are being relocated per day to the new site in Jebel area, which is built to accommodate up to 13,000 people. 

“Right now, you see a lot of people moving.  Initially there were such small numbers of people going every day and that was partly because people, you know in the beginning of a process like this, they don’t know where they are going.”

He explains that momentum for the relocation plan has picked up after word spread among the displaced that conditions were good at the new Jebel site.

“But now people are gradually starting to move… the numbers go from 10, 20, 30 people a day to 100 to 300 to 400, which is now the maximum.”

The medical organization Doctors Without Borders in April slammed the UN’s relocation plan as unrealistic because it would not be completed before heavy rains and flooding hit the Tomping site.

MSF accused the UN Mission of ‘shocking indifference’ to the plight of the displaced at the Tomping site, saying that in the short-term the UN should have expanded the site itself rather than asking the residents to move.  

Meanwhile, Segaar also stated that the UN-protected camp in Bentiu has been continuing to see an influx of an average of 100 displaced persons a day.

The population there has reached more than 40,000.

Photo: Girls at the gate of the UNMISS Tongping Base

Related coverage:

MSF slams UN leadership in South Sudan for ‘shocking indifference’ (9 April)

UNMISS responds to charges of ‘shocking’ neglect of 20,000 people under its protection (9 April)