Thousands of South Sudanese returning from Sudan are stranded at Abayok camp in Renk County of Upper Nile State with insufficient food and medicines, facing delays in onward transportation, according to the head of the camp committee.

Abayok is a treeless camp for returnees on the outskirts of Renk just off the town’s main road leading northward to Khartoum. Many of the residents have been living in squalid conditions for well over a year, gradually selling off luggage and furniture brought from the north in growing desperation.

Some returnees lack onward transportation while others have refused opportunities to continue their journey southward, preferring instead to remain for now where they are.

The camp together with three others in Renk has seen “an alarming increase” in new arrivals, with about 7,000 arriving in November and December, according to the UN Coordination Agency (OCHA). The camps – or ‘temporary settlements,’ as the UN prefers to call them – now house more than 20,000 returnees. These migrants arrived under pressure from the Sudanese government, which threatened to exclude people of South Sudanese origin from services and jobs. 

Lazarus Chagai, head of the Abayok camp committee, said in an interview with Radio Tamazuj that returnees at Abayok camp lack food and medicine. He pointed out that there is a health center at the camp but it lacks basic services. He said there is an acute shortage of medicines and the needs of the returnees are not met.

Crisis of 2011-2012

Aid organizations began to raise an alarm about Abayok in late 2011, if not earlier. “The living conditions for the returnees are quite shocking,” an aid worker with Medair reported in late October 2011.

IOM policy toward the returnees kept them off regular World Food Programme distributions, according to an IOM field officer, who preferred anonymity because he was not authorized by his agency to speak to the press.

The officer acknowledged in an interview in March 2012 that the situation in Abayok was “pretty bad for South Sudan.” He explained that since many of the returnees had resisted onward movement, they were given a final ration of grain to last them three months – standard issuance for migrants reaching their final destination.

Mina transit camp, in contrast to the Abayok one, was reportedly less affected because more returnees there aimed to continue their journey and were only held up by the shortage of barges and poor roads, which nominally merited them rations for as long as they remained ‘in transit.’  

An MSF-France assessment team sent to Renk in December 2011 were particularly alarmed at health conditions in Abayok and by the number of freshly dug graves in the graveyard adjoining the camp. About 80 camp residents were buried there, according to a resident interviewed in February, who insisted that they had died of “hunger and not diseases.”

Returnees interviewed in early 2012 said that aid efforts were limited to digging latrines and water points, and did not include regular food distributions. Asked in March last year whether the camp received UN aid, the UNHCR spokesperson in Juba replied that the agency aided only some vulnerable individuals and planned projects to “anchor coexistence” between camp dwellers and the Renk communities.

The UN resisted suggestions of any particular neglect: “Further to previous unconfirmed reports regarding malnutrition at the sites, initial findings of a nutrition assessment that begun 11 September in Mina and Abayok indicated that levels of severe and moderate malnutrition are not abnormal for South Sudan,” OCHA reported in a bulletin dated 22 September 2011.

Nonetheless, the UN apparently resumed general food distributions of some kind later in the year; a mid-December report from OCHA stated that “all” returnees in Renk County “depend on humanitarian assistance for basic services including food.”

The camp committee head, Lazarus Chagai, speaking Wednesday, complained that Abayok camp returnees did not receive food shares in equal proportion to rations of returnees at other camps in the county. He alleged dereliction toward the camp by the UNHCR commission in Renk County.

Fear and stigma

Humanitarian assessments have repeatedly found that about half of the returnees in Abayok do not want to continue southward to their places of origin. They prefer Renk for its security and basic services, including electricity and schools, as well as its proximity to Khartoum, which was a magnet for laborers before the crises of independence.

There are also fears associated with returning home. OCHA acknowledged last month that 8,000 of 13,000 returnees in Abayok need ‘help’ to re-integrate into host communities. This is perhaps understatement: southerners who spent the war period in the north face stigma, and may have serious concerns for their safety or livelihoods upon arrival in their areas of origin.

Local authorities in Renk have declined to allocate land to the migrants, fearing an unmanageable influx of non-indigenous inhabitants. The very name of the largest transit camp – ‘Abayok,’ a Dinka term of warning or curse – suggests that the predominantly non-Dinka returnees in the camp are far from welcome.

Caught between the pull and security of the city and the push of political and aid policies, migrants have been left in a state of dystopia and indecision. Although they have crossed an international border under political pressure, they are not considered refugees because they are returning to their own homeland rather than leaving it. Nor are they considered ‘internally displaced persons’ – another designation used frequently in aid circles – despite indications that many of them faced a return to areas still experiencing active conflict.

IOM data gathered early last year on the nominal onward destinations of returnees showed that many were Nuers and Shilluks from areas then affected by remnants of the Olony and Athor rebellions and SPLA counter-insurgency operations, or by other sources of insecurity.

Data indicated that as many as 1000 returnees faced a return to such areas. Of the 733 individuals at Abayok camp originally from Jonglei, 179 identified Khorfulus, Old Fangak or Ayod as their final destination. These areas were part of a wide swath of north-western Jonglei either loyal to the late rebel leader George Athor or under threat from his forces. Another 312, more than a third of the Jonglei group, listed as their destinations Akobo, Duk or Uror, areas heavily affected by the conflict among the Lou Nuer, Murle and Dinka of Dut County.

Actual returns to such areas were rare. An IOM map showing onward movement from Renk County between June 28, 2011 and February 7, 2012 indicated limited returns to rural parts of Upper Nile, and extremely few returns to rural parts of Jonglei – with notably none to Fangak, Ayod or Nyirol counties.

Mina Camp, in contrast to Abayok, had no residents returning to Jonglei other than 176 people heading to Bor, the state capital. The biggest difference between the Abayok and Mina was the number of residents destined for other parts of Upper Nile.  In Mina, only 29 individuals named destinations other than the state capital Malakal, whereas 1310 people in Abayok were aiming to reach Upper Nile locations other than Malakal or Renk, including 172 aiming for Panyikang, 309 Fashoda, and 26 Manj.

Based on these figures, it appeared that the riverside camp at Mina (which means ‘Port’) was attracting more people from urban and other secure areas who were keen on an immediate return, whereas the Abayok camp attracted residents from rural Upper Nile and rural Jonglei who were more hesitant about a return.

One of the Abayok residents originally from Fangak, Chief William Shatia, told Radio Tamazuj that he spent 24 years in the northern before coming to the camp in late 2010. He said that returnees should not be forced to go back home but should be given the choice to remain in Renk, appealing for land for agriculture and farming tools.

Returns to Bentiu

A group of 61 families returned to Bentiu this week from Sudan via Renk. They were welcomed by Unity State deputy governor and the state social welfare minister.

Lubna Abdel Ghani, minister of social welfare and gender, explained to Radio Tamazuj that the returnee families came by road on a journey organized by IOM and church leaders.

She said her ministry and humanitarian organizations arranged to provide some initial aid to the families while waiting for distribution of residential plots, adding that for the returnees who want to go to their home counties the state provides accommodation for shelter until they adjust to their situation there.

Photo by Radio Tamazuj: Abayok resident, December 2011.

To contact Radio Tamazuj with news tips or information write to radiotamazuj@gmail.com. For instant updates follow @RadioTamazuj on Twitter.