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Internally Displaced Persons – 2008

As of October 2008, the UNHCR assisted 28,151 IDPs with returning home, which brought the total number returned to 80,938.¹ This figure includes only those who returned to southern Sudan. Resettlement in Darfur, where a civil war was ongoing for the fifth consecutive year and Abyei, where clash took place in May 2008 did not take place. According to the report of the U.N. Secretary General, of the approximately 50,000 individuals displaced, between 12,000 and 16,000 returned voluntarily to Abyei.² According to a news report that quoted UNHCR, some two million southern Sudanese who were internally displaced had returned to their homes since the signing of the peace agreement.³ The IDMC reported that the number of IDPs for Sudan declined to 4,900,000 IDPs.⁴ This suggests that about one million IDPs returned to their community in 2008.

1. “Report of the Secretary General on the Sudan,” United Nations (S/2008/662), October 20, 2008.
2. Ibid.
3. “Commissioner on Sudan-Uganda Border Urges Refugees to Return Home,” Sudan Tribune, December 25, 2008.
4. “Internal displacement caused by conflict and violence.”