IOM begins airlift to take South Sudan’s citizens home
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January 27, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – An airlift of 12 flights aimed at
carrying nearly 400 people stranded in Sudan’s capital Khartoum to
their homeland in South Sudan began on Friday, the International
Organization for Migration (IOM), has announced.
JPEG - 25.3 kb
A Southern Sudanese family waves to relatives from a train to Baher Al
Gazal State in South Sudan, in Khartoum January 9, 2011. Southern
Sudanese are heading home to the south in such convoys, organized by
humanitarian groups in the south, to ensure their vote counts in the
independence referendum. (REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)
IOM, which conducts the airlift, announced in a press release on
Thursday that the operation, which will help 165 people with 226
family members and escorts to return home, is scheduled to run for a
week.
Millions of South Sudanese who lived in Sudan had to return home in
droves since their region seceded from Sudan on 9 July 2012 in line
with a plebiscite on independence. The vote was promised under a 2005
peace deal that ended decades of civil wars between the Muslim-ruled
north and the mainly Christian South.
But, according to UN estimates, there are 700,000 southern Sudanese
still living in north Sudan.
IOM said that the returnees will be met on arrival by its South
Sudanese staff and will be helped to reach their final destination
“They include elderly and disabled people, pregnant women and people
with serious medical conditions. Nine unaccompanied minors, identified
by UNICEF, will also travel with the group to be reunited with their
families in South Sudan” IOM’s release said.
Sudan has decided to strip southerners of their citizenship and set
April as a deadline for southerners to return home or else face
treatment as foreigners.
(ST)
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