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Gates Foundation Grants UN Refugee Agency $10 Million for Relief Work in South
Sudan

UN News Service (New York)
NEWS
December 1, 2006
Posted to the web December 1, 2006

The United Nations refugee agency today announced a $10-million emergency
relief grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for health,
education, water and sanitation projects to reintegrate hundreds of thousands
of Sudanese uprooted by 21 years of civil war in the south of the vast country.
"These projects will help returnees and communities in South Sudan bridge the
difficult gap between repatriation, reconstruction and long-term development,"
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) António Guterres said in a statement.
"Equipping communities early on with basic essentials such as clean water and
sanitation, schools and health care helps ensure that those who are going home
can stay home."
There are still 350,000 Sudanese refugees in neighbouring countries waiting to
go home to the south, and an estimated 4 million internally displaced persons
in Sudan itself, since a peace agreement between the Government and rebels was
concluded nearly two years ago.
The new grant will cover immediate needs over a 28-month period in three main
sectors - basic health care, education, and water and sanitation - in Western,
Central and Eastern Equatoria states as well as the Upper Nile, UNHCR spokesman
Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva.
A series of community-based reintegration projects focusing on each sector will
benefit 210,000 Sudanese returning refugees as well as some 200,000 internally
displaced people (IDPs) going back to their home villages. UNHCR will work with
its UN and non-governmental organization (NGO) partners and local communities
in implementing the projects.
Earlier this week heavy fighting broke out between the Sudanese armed forces
and members of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) near the town of
Malakal in what Secretary-General Kofi Annan called a serious breach of the
January 2005 peace agreement ending the war.
That war was separate from the continuing strife in the Darfur region where
more than 2 million people are estimated to have been uprooted, including
218,000 who fled into Chad. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said
last week the number of people in need of aid to survive in Darfur had surged
by hundreds of thousands to 4 million in the past six months.


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