Nineteen-year-old Monyjok Malual Marial describes life in Kakuma refugee camp, in the Northern part of neighbouring Kenya, as difficult. After years in exile, he decided to return to his origins in Malakal – only to discover that resuming life in South Sudan is hardly a walk in the park either.
“I started my return back from Kakuma in early 2017, through Eastern Equatoria and finally settling in Malakal. The journey was long and security in some parts was a great challenge, but I struggled through,” says Monyjok, who is now struggling to come to terms with a reality where resources and opportunities are hard to come by.
Monyjok is one of many refugees who have recently resettled in Malakal, returning from different refugee camps in Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia. Their reintegration process has so far been slow and tedious, despite support offered by the government and humanitarian agencies.
Strained resources, poor infrastructure and insecurity in some surrounding areas have limited access to other towns, where economic growth and an improved standard of living for returnees may otherwise have been possible.
Monyjok’s biggest disappointment, however, is that he cannot study.
“My hopes of continuing my education have been dashed. There are no institutions for higher-level studies in Malakal, but I’m still hopeful that things will look up eventually and life will become better for us,” he says.
Another returnee, Nyanakim Majok Mabil, arrived in Malakal from a Uganda refugee camp in Uganda, a country currently hosting hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese refugees. As a mother of small children, she says her biggest challenges were feeding them and making sure they had clean drinking water.
“I knew my resettling here would not be easy, but I choose to be positive. I now have started cultivating a small piece of land that was allocated to me by the authorities, and I expect things to get better,” she says.
On Wednesday, the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Malakal field office of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan commemorated World Refugee Day – a day set aside to recognize the strength, courage, perseverance of refugees, and the robust challenges they face across the world.
The Acting Head of the Malakal Field Office, Christian Stephane Mikala, reiterated the peacekeeping mission’s commitment to enable the peaceful coexistence between returning refugees, internally displaced persons staying at protection sites and host communities.
“Together we want to create conducive environment for people to return to their places of origin and to their homes. This is the only dignified and rights-based way forward that can bring lasting peace to this country and to Upper Nile,” he said.