SUDAN: Durable solutions elusive as southern IDPs return and ...

need to spend time reconstructing shelters and guarding their property (Aegis Trust, June 2006,
p.10).
In some cases IDPs received prior notice of planned demolitions, while in other cases they
received no notice at all and were simply awoken by the arrival of trucks which had come to
remove them (Tufts-IDMC, August 2008, p.20). No alternative shelter has been provided by the
authorities for IDPs after the demolition of IDP settlements. For example, after the demolitions
which took place in the Mandela settlement in November 2008, thousands of people had to live in
makeshift structures made of sticks and clothes. While the conditions in the settlement prior to the
demolitions were poor, residents had secure mud brick homes and some had private generators
providing electricity (IRIN, 4 December 2008).
Some IDPs have been allocated new plots by the authorities, but they are left to construct new
shelters themselves. Those who do not get plots are left with nowhere to go and are often
relocated to distant areas in the desert on the outskirts of Khartoum, without access to even the
most basic services (Tufts-IDMC, August 2008, p.20; Watchlist, April 2007, p.16; Assal, March
2006, p. 18).
(For more information on the situation of IDPs in Khartoum in relation to housing, land and
property rights, see the section on Property, Livelihoods and Education. See also the section on
Durable Solutions).
Lack of humanitarian assistance
Until 1997, many of the IDPs in Khartoum’s camps and settlements were dependent on
humanitarian assistance provided by NGOs. However, in 1997 the government adopted a policy
aimed at reducing the distribution of humanitarian relief to IDPs in Khartoum, with the stated
intention of encouraging IDPs to become self-reliant. The new policy was meant to result in the
integration of IDPs, who were meant to be provided with their own plots. Relief was only to be
distributed to the 20-25 per cent of IDPs who were deemed to be vulnerable: people who had
newly arrived, those who had recently been relocated, the disabled, the elderly, orphans, widows
and pregnant women (Assal, July 2004, pp.25-26; and March 2006, p.21-22).
Levels of humanitarian assistance to IDPs in Khartoum’s camps and settlements declined further
in the wake of the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between north and south
Sudan in January 2005, and the intensification of the Darfur crisis from late-2003 onwards. NGOs
started to shift their focus elsewhere, most notably to the humanitarian needs in Darfur itself, and
to the repatriation of IDPs from Southern Sudan to their areas of origin. As a result, IDPs in
Khartoum have been less able to rely on humanitarian assistance (Landinfo, November 2008;
Aegis Trust, June 2006; Assal, March 2006, p.22).
Community-based organisations (CBOs) which seek to address some of the needs of Khartoum’s
IDPs face obstacles in the form of the lack of registration and legal recognition of the CBOs by
the authorities (for example, in 2006 only four out of ten CBOs in Al Salam camp were reported to
have been registered by the authorities), and the fact that donor funding only reaches CBOs
through NGOs instead of directly from donors (Assal, March 2006, p.22-23).
By the end of 2007, UNHCR warned that while most humanitarian assistance in Sudan was being
directed to Darfur, IDPs in Khartoum were in need of priority humanitarian assistance. The
agency warned that the diminishing humanitarian assistance in the settlements was not being
adequately compensated by a commitment from the government to provide adequate services,
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