- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Friday said the number of South Sudanese refugees living in neighbouring countries “has this week passed the one million mark”.
UNHCR spokesperson Leo Dobbs told reporters in Geneva on Friday that South Sudan, with this milestone, joins Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia as countries which have produced more than a million refugees.
“Most of those fleeing South Sudan are women and children. They include survivors of violent attacks, sexual assault, children that have been separated from their parents or travelled alone, the disabled, the elderly and people in need of urgent medical care,” he said.
According to the UNCHR, more than 185,000 people have fled South Sudan since fresh violence erupted in the country in Juba on July 8.
Dobbs noted that “more than three quarters of the recent arrivals have crossed into Uganda, but a growing number of people have entered Ethiopia’s western Gambella region in the past week and others have been heading to Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Central African Republic (CAR)”.
According to the UNHCR, “Uganda is hosting the lion’s share of South Sudanese refugees, with 373,626, more than a third of them arriving since early July. They keep coming; over the past week more than 20,000 new arrivals were recorded, primarily through the Oraba crossing in the northwest”.
source : abna24
