From Responsibility to Response: Assessing National - Brookings

CHAPTER 1 Assessing National Approaches to Internal Displacement: Findings from 15 Countries
Secretary-General has noted these and other serious
obstacles to securing durable solutions in the South:
“Local security and land distribution are among the
most urgent issues, but continued efforts are also required
to develop options for both rural and urban livelihoods,
expanding local services, and promoting inter-
and intra-community reconciliation.” 107 In the absence
of those conditions and in the context of continued
inter-ethnic violence, a number of returnees have been
displaced again. According to an IOM report in 2009,
“failed returns” include 10 percent of IDP returnees (an
estimated 185,000 people) who were such secondarily
displaced persons. 108
Planned reintegration schemes that were under discussion
in 2009 between the United Nations and the
government of Southern Sudan to cover travel costs
and school construction to assist 500,000 IDP returnees
by 2011 were criticized as falling well short of establishing
durable solutions. 109 It is unclear whether
this plan is related to the $25 million “emergency repatriation”
program entitled “Come Home to Choose,”
unveiled in mid-2010 by the humanitarian affairs and
disaster management ministry of the government of
Southern Sudan, under which 1.5 million Sudanese
from the North would return to the South in time for
the December 2010 referendum on secession from the
North. The program had prompted concerns that the
returns were politically motivated and would be neither
voluntary nor durable, as aid organizations already had
difficulty integrating existing returnees. 110
107 UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General
on the Sudan, S/2009/61, 30 January 2009, para. 47, p. 9
(www.un.org/Docs/sc/sgrep09.htm).
108 IOM, IOM Tracking of Returns Project: Total Returns
to Southern Sudan and Southern Kordofan, Post CPA to
December 2009, March 2010, p. 9 (www.iom.ch/jahia/.../
docs/tracking_returns_annual_report_dec2009.pdf).
109 Refugees International, South Sudan: Urgent Action
Needed to Avert Collapse, 26 March 2009 (www.
refugeesinternational.org).
110 Refugees International, “Statement by Refugees
International on the Government of Southern Sudan’s
Mass Repatriation Plans,” 27 August 2010 (www.refugeesinternational.org);
Agence France-Presse, “South
148
With the independence of South Sudan in July 2011,
national responsibility for securing durable solutions
to displacement has shifted fully to the government of
South Sudan. Given the scale of the displacement and
the centrality of the issue to the conflict, securing durable
solutions for the millions of IDPs and refugees
from South Sudan surely will be among the greatest
challenges faced by this young country as well as among
the main criteria by which its new government will be
judged.
In Darfur, conflict displaced 2.7 million people IDPs and
300,000 refugees from 2003-09 and displacement continues,
with 268,000 new IDPs in 2010 and ongoing displacement
in 2011, though some returns also have taken
place. Various efforts to halt the violence and resolve the
conflict have been attempted but, to date, have failed to
secure a comprehensive and lasting peace agreement. In
2006, the Darfur Peace Agreement was brokered after
consultations with various armed groups. 111 However,
only one of the various nonstate armed groups in
Darfur—the Sudan Liberation Movement—signed
the agreement with the government, and in 2011, the
group’s leader, Minni Minnawi, retracted his support
for the deal entirely. In 2009, the African Union and
United Nations restarted peace talks for Darfur, which
were hosted by the government of Qatar. Together
with the government of Sudan, all the nonstate armed
groups had a standing invitation to join the talks, but
only the Liberation and Justice Movement (a recently
formed amalgam of several armed factions) and, only
sporadically, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM),
a long-standing and militarily significant rebel group,
participated in the talks. The return of refugees and
Sudan Plans Return of 1.5 Million for Referendum,” 24
August 2010 (www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/South%20
Sudan%20plans%20return%20of%201.5%20million%20
for%20referendum/-/1066/995754/-/dfd1qdz/-/); Hannah
Entwisle, The End of the Road? A Review of UNHCR’s Role
in the Return and Reintegration of Internally Displaced
Populations, UNHCR, Evaluation Reports, 1 July 2010
(www.unhcr.org/4c4989e89.html).
111 See the full text of the peace agreements at UNDP Sudan
(www.sd.undp.org/SudanPandA.htm).