Khartoum govt. to move ‘160,000 South Sudanese refugees’

The Voluntary Work Commission of Khartoum state will transport about "160,000 South Sudanese refugees" out of the capital as soon as possible.

Mohamed Mustafa Sennari, the head of the Commission, said at a press conference in Khartoum on Sunday that the refugees will be relocated to production areas in El Gezira and El Gedaref states, instead of relying on aid assistance provided by the UN.

The state official said that the arrangements with regard to moving the refugees are going smoothly. Only a few refugees at the Naivasha camp in Omdurman’s Umbadda district “created problems”.

The deputy head of the Sudanese Refugees Commission, Mohamed El Tohami, announced that they had a meeting on the matter with the National Parliament’s Social Affairs Committee. He reported that the total number of refugees in the country “stands at 700,000 with about 4,000 living outside refugee camps”.

Mohamed Ahmed Shayib, chairman of the Social Affairs Committee, contested the numbers, and announced that they will summon “the Interior Minister and Ministers concerned with the mechanism used for counting the number of refugees in Sudan”.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) 198,448 South Sudanese refugees have arrived in Sudan since fighting broke out in South Sudan in mid-December 2013.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan reported in its 9-15 November bulletin that intensified fighting and a worsening food situation in South Sudan’s Unity and Upper Nile states will likely lead to a further influx of new arrivals in the coming weeks.