Sudan's government is placing impossible demands on 12,000 South Sudanese stranded in the port of Kosti to move across the border by Saturday or face expulsion-IOM
p> NAIROBI (AlertNet) – Sudan’s government is placing impossible demands on 12,000 South Sudanese stranded in the port of Kosti to move across the border by Saturday or face expulsion, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said.Khartoum authorities ordered the southerners, who have waited for months at Kosti port for barges, to leave the camp area within one week, state news agency SUNA said late on Sunday.
“The basic cost of moving this caseload is $4 million and it would take a minimum of four months to move these returnees by barge provided all barge assets were available and there was no delay,” Samantha Donkin, public information officer for IOM South Sudan, said on Monday.
“Relocating stranded returnees from Kosti before 5 May 2012 is not possible,” she said, citing a lack of transport and fuel shortages.
SUNA quoted the local state governor as saying that authorities had taken measures to expel the returnees after May 5. He said the southerners in the area were posing a security and environmental threat.
Some half a million stateless southerners are trapped on the wrong side of the border as tensions escalate between the two nations. The “citizenship transitional period” for South Sudanese in Sudan expired on April 9, nine months after their nation gained its independence.
The returnees in Kosti have been stranded there since the beginning of the year because Khartoum prevented IOM from using barges to transport them, Donkin said.
Khartoum fears that the barges would be used by the government of South Sudan to transport its soldiers and equipment on the return northbound journey.
“IOM agreed to a number of measures to prevent non-humanitarian use of the barges, however IOM is still waiting for assurance (in writing) from (South Sudan’s) President Salva Kiir to this effect,” said Donkin.
STUCK IN TRANSIT
IOM fears that expulsion of the returnees would increase the number of stranded returnees at Renk port on the South Sudanese side of the border.
Renk has become a bottleneck for returnees due to a lack of onward transport, often through conflict zones.
Over 17,000 people are currently stuck in three transit sites across the town, often with little more than plastic sheeting to protect them from the rain.
“IOM is concerned that moving the Kosti caseload directly to Renk would multiply the plentiful humanitarian problems there,” said Donkin.
IOM is working to persuade the authorities in Sudan to allow more time to resolve the problem, saying this would let the movements happen in “a humane and orderly way”.
Some 340,000 people returned to South Sudan between late 2010 and late 2011, the majority from Khartoum.
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
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