By Aweye Teddy Onam
At least 11,000 returnees who fled Sudan war are stranded at Renk transit center and do not know where to go.
According to Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, the stranded are South Sudanese born in Sudan,
Humanitarian Affairs Minister Albino Akol Atak revealed this on Thursday that it is difficult to trace their roots of the South Sudanese who had remained in Sudan for decades.
April 15 war that broke out on in Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has forced a large influx of returnees and refugees into South Sudan and other neighboring countries.
Over half a million households that fled the war in Sudan have remained without food and shelter for months after arriving in different parts of South Sudan bordering state, most especially through Renk and Raja counties.
Minister Albino said the government and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) took on the responsibility of transporting the returnees who fled the raging war onward to their final destination from the transit camps.
But Mr. Albino said they are engaging those returnees who do not know where to go because they lost connection to their ancestral home villages.
“The people who do not know where to go, we will continue engaging them so that they choose where to go because when we actually take people to their final destination, we don’t force them but ask them and show us where they want to go,” said Albino.
“It is the freedom of those people to choose either to go further or to choose any place to stay because, since they are citizens of the Republic of South Sudan, they have that right to stay anywhere,” he continued.
The humanitarian affairs minister hinted that the reduction of food ratios is not intentionally done by the partners, but resources are increasingly being stretched daily due to the increasing numbers of new arrivals.
The government and the humanitarian partners have been dealing with 9.4 million people in dire need of humanitarian support.
Four categories: returnees, who come back from exile due to conflicts and hunger in the countries of refuge, refugees from neighboring countries, and people displaced internally by floods and the host communities, all need support.