Business booms as refugees strain Nimule resources
Nimule, a town at Sudan’s southern tip, has gained from being just a few metres from the Ugandan border, which provided a safety valve whenever the town was cut off from the rest of Southern Sudan by war.
Nimule, a town at Sudan’s southern tip, has gained from being just a few metres from the Ugandan border, which provided a safety valve whenever the town was cut off from the rest of Southern Sudan by war.
Cross-border trade and population movement mean the Ugandan currency dominates the market, the Ugandan curriculum is followed in schools, Ugandan products are on sale everywhere, people listen to Ugandan FM radio stations and talk on Ugandan mobile phone networks. Thousands of people from the area still live in refugee camps in Uganda.
One Ugandan import, however, has brought nothing but fear, misery and death: the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.
Nimule and its surrounding areas have been terrorised by ambushes, looting and abductions by the LRA since the mid-1990s. The town hosts thousands of people who have fled their homes due to attacks by, or in fear of the LRA.
The town also has Sudanese refugees, who had been living in camps in Uganda, but recently returned home and other displaced communities that are unwilling or unable to return home, regardless of the LRA threat. However, apart from the bustling commercial activity, the town faces social problems.
Swelling population
Situated at a bend on the Nile, Nimule, is growing fast. Last year, a survey estimated the population at 45,000, but a local administrator, Shalfa Olweny Butrus, claims the population has doubled since.
The houses of displaced people – much like those in northern Ugandan camps – are scattered around the town, some on swampy land. Ugandan-style boda-boda motorbikes ply the dusty main street.
The latest community of displaced people to arrive in the town was living temporarily in the Anzara settlement, no more than a kilometre from Nimule.
“The Anzara people originally came for safety – but it turned out to be the opposite,†said Gabriel Unzi, a food monitor with the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an NGO which distributes food to Anzara and other needy communities in Nimule.
John Dick, a community leader from Anzara, said on February 20, two people were killed and three injured in a night raid.
“Many households lost food and other property,†he said.
The settlement, not far from Nimule Airstrip, which is guarded by the Ugandan and Sudan People’s Liberation Army troops, has not been fully re-occupied, but people have started going there by day, as security has stabilised.
Abandoned fields
While Nimule is doing well from the constant flow of goods and people from Uganda, insecurity has left a diminished agricultural economy.
“The area could be very productive, according to agricultural workers, with crops like cassava, sweet potatoes, groundnuts and maize. But people have deserted their fields due to insecurity,†Leonard Lagu of CRS told IRIN.
“It is a very difficult life for those who have to depend on buying things from the market. We do not want to depend on imported food,†said Butrus.
“When we see people depending on imported goods, I do not feel happy. If all become businessmen, who will buy?†he asked.
Social pressures
The booming business atmosphere is also changing the social dynamics in the town, bringing new risks. Butrus is concerned about the rising number of bars and sex workers.
“The worst enemy is HIV,†he said.
Drunken driving and lack of trained drivers contribute to a high number of accidents on the road to Juba.
“All the drivers are learners,†said Jeannot Wabulakombe, a doctor with Merlin, an NGO based in Nimule.
In April and May, about 50 patients with serious injuries were admitted to Nimule’s hospital, one of the largest and best-run in Southern Sudan.
Health problems in the area include malaria, which accounts for 40% of outpatients, diarrhoea, a sign of poor sanitation, can develop into a dangerous outbreak of cholera or acute watery diarrhoea and the hospital is continually on standby —
“It can come back at any time,†Wabulakombe said.
The population is so mobile, Wabulakombe continued, that programmes requiring extended treatment, such as TB, face particular problems.
Returnees from Uganda and IDPs
Bol Dur, an SPLA commander in charge of patrolling the road north of Nimule, said the return of refugees from Uganda would boost security, denying the LRA the uninhabited space that suited their tactics and need for unhindered mobility.
Local administration officials are also keen on the return of refugees from northern Uganda, but remain wary of the demands that they will place on the limited services. They are also anxious about land disputes. Many refugees in IDPs congregating in larger settlements because of the LRA, will not return unless peace returns to northern Uganda.
Even those who have already returned face problems adjusting.
The difficulties of rebuilding a life in Sudan are daunting, compared with the constrained but relatively predictable existence as a refugee in Uganda. As a local aid worker in Nimule said: “In Uganda, you get free food, you dig and you are safe.â€
Nimule hosts a large population of displaced people of the Dinka origin, who fled the civil war in the Bor region of Jonglei, to the north, in the 1990s. An NGO survey in April 2006 indicated that more than 20,000 people living in Nimule – almost half the population – were of the Dinka origin. Over 2,000 left voluntarily with assistance last year. But the most recent organised operation to help more return to Bor fizzled out, local sources say. Some of the Dinka are occupying land that returnees expect to reclaim, a local official said.
“They do not want to go,†he said, confirming that a recent attempt to truck Dinka communities back to Bor had failed.
A September 2006 report compiled by the UN and NGOs said a concerted effort was needed to ‘avoid a simmering violence’ in Nimule.
Residents say the resentment toward the Dinka is based not only on land, but also the fact that key positions in the military, police and customs are held by the Dinka, not by people from the local area, where the Madi ethnic group dominates.
IRIN
Cross-border trade and population movement mean the Ugandan currency dominates the market, the Ugandan curriculum is followed in schools, Ugandan products are on sale everywhere, people listen to Ugandan FM radio stations and talk on Ugandan mobile phone networks. Thousands of people from the area still live in refugee camps in Uganda.
One Ugandan import, however, has brought nothing but fear, misery and death: the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.
Nimule and its surrounding areas have been terrorised by ambushes, looting and abductions by the LRA since the mid-1990s. The town hosts thousands of people who have fled their homes due to attacks by, or in fear of the LRA.
The town also has Sudanese refugees, who had been living in camps in Uganda, but recently returned home and other displaced communities that are unwilling or unable to return home, regardless of the LRA threat. However, apart from the bustling commercial activity, the town faces social problems.
Swelling population
Situated at a bend on the Nile, Nimule, is growing fast. Last year, a survey estimated the population at 45,000, but a local administrator, Shalfa Olweny Butrus, claims the population has doubled since.
The houses of displaced people – much like those in northern Ugandan camps – are scattered around the town, some on swampy land. Ugandan-style boda-boda motorbikes ply the dusty main street.
The latest community of displaced people to arrive in the town was living temporarily in the Anzara settlement, no more than a kilometre from Nimule.
“The Anzara people originally came for safety – but it turned out to be the opposite,†said Gabriel Unzi, a food monitor with the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), an NGO which distributes food to Anzara and other needy communities in Nimule.
John Dick, a community leader from Anzara, said on February 20, two people were killed and three injured in a night raid.
“Many households lost food and other property,†he said.
The settlement, not far from Nimule Airstrip, which is guarded by the Ugandan and Sudan People’s Liberation Army troops, has not been fully re-occupied, but people have started going there by day, as security has stabilised.
Abandoned fields
While Nimule is doing well from the constant flow of goods and people from Uganda, insecurity has left a diminished agricultural economy.
“The area could be very productive, according to agricultural workers, with crops like cassava, sweet potatoes, groundnuts and maize. But people have deserted their fields due to insecurity,†Leonard Lagu of CRS told IRIN.
“It is a very difficult life for those who have to depend on buying things from the market. We do not want to depend on imported food,†said Butrus.
“When we see people depending on imported goods, I do not feel happy. If all become businessmen, who will buy?†he asked.
Social pressures
The booming business atmosphere is also changing the social dynamics in the town, bringing new risks. Butrus is concerned about the rising number of bars and sex workers.
“The worst enemy is HIV,†he said.
Drunken driving and lack of trained drivers contribute to a high number of accidents on the road to Juba.
“All the drivers are learners,†said Jeannot Wabulakombe, a doctor with Merlin, an NGO based in Nimule.
In April and May, about 50 patients with serious injuries were admitted to Nimule’s hospital, one of the largest and best-run in Southern Sudan.
Health problems in the area include malaria, which accounts for 40% of outpatients, diarrhoea, a sign of poor sanitation, can develop into a dangerous outbreak of cholera or acute watery diarrhoea and the hospital is continually on standby —
“It can come back at any time,†Wabulakombe said.
The population is so mobile, Wabulakombe continued, that programmes requiring extended treatment, such as TB, face particular problems.
Returnees from Uganda and IDPs
Bol Dur, an SPLA commander in charge of patrolling the road north of Nimule, said the return of refugees from Uganda would boost security, denying the LRA the uninhabited space that suited their tactics and need for unhindered mobility.
Local administration officials are also keen on the return of refugees from northern Uganda, but remain wary of the demands that they will place on the limited services. They are also anxious about land disputes. Many refugees in IDPs congregating in larger settlements because of the LRA, will not return unless peace returns to northern Uganda.
Even those who have already returned face problems adjusting.
The difficulties of rebuilding a life in Sudan are daunting, compared with the constrained but relatively predictable existence as a refugee in Uganda. As a local aid worker in Nimule said: “In Uganda, you get free food, you dig and you are safe.â€
Nimule hosts a large population of displaced people of the Dinka origin, who fled the civil war in the Bor region of Jonglei, to the north, in the 1990s. An NGO survey in April 2006 indicated that more than 20,000 people living in Nimule – almost half the population – were of the Dinka origin. Over 2,000 left voluntarily with assistance last year. But the most recent organised operation to help more return to Bor fizzled out, local sources say. Some of the Dinka are occupying land that returnees expect to reclaim, a local official said.
“They do not want to go,†he said, confirming that a recent attempt to truck Dinka communities back to Bor had failed.
A September 2006 report compiled by the UN and NGOs said a concerted effort was needed to ‘avoid a simmering violence’ in Nimule.
Residents say the resentment toward the Dinka is based not only on land, but also the fact that key positions in the military, police and customs are held by the Dinka, not by people from the local area, where the Madi ethnic group dominates.
IRIN