The capitals of Western and Northern Bahr al Ghazal are receiving hundreds of people fleeing conflict in other parts of South Sudan. The two states have not been directly affected by clashes.
Deng Kuel Kuel, director of South Sudan’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (SSRRC) in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, said on Wednesday that the city received 59 people who had been in Renk and Malakal, while dozens more had arrived in the previous week.
“All of those who came are natives of Northern Bahr al Ghazal except for a family of four people who are from Abyei,” he said, noting also that the newly arrived group includes children without families.
The group Kuel was describing were part of a larger group of returnees from north Sudan who were trapped by conflict in Renk and Malakal during clashes in late December and mid January.
Since independence in 2011, Upper Nile State has served as a transit route or temporary home for thousands of people who returned from Sudan, where they often had lived for many years since the second Sudanese civil war.
Kuel told Radio Tamazuj that the displaced people arrived with the help of the International Organization for Migration, which has been airlifting returnees from Malakal.
The IOM airlift was funded by the US Agency for International Development, according to a USAID statement a week ago, which explained that as of 18 January, they had transported nearly 400 returnees from Malakal to Juba, but later had to temporarily suspend the airlift because of insecurity in Malakal.
According to a statement by IOM, the stranded returnees had left Renk by barge on 15 December, heading to various destinations, including Upper Nile, Unity and Jonglei states, and the Greater Equatorial and Bahr el Ghazal regions. After barge transport became too dangerous, the airlift began.
But according to Kuel, others among the recent arrivals to Aweil had been in Bentiu and had run into the UNMISS base during the fighting and sought shelter there.
The relief official also explained that the returnees will be sent onward to the different counties of the state, and that they’ve been given food by the World Food Programme.
Meanwhile, citizens in the capital of Western Bahr el Ghazal, Wau, said that they received until the day before yesterday approximately 1200 people displaced by conflict, especially from Unity State’s capital Bentiu.
Vice President James Wani Igga recently made a trip to Wau to boost recruitment into the army and to visit wounded SPLA soldiers who were receiving treatment at the hospitals in the city.
IOM photo