SECONDARY MOVEMENTS TO NORTH DARFUR ONGOING AS REFUGEES SEEK WORK – Biometric registration of refugees in Al Lait locality is ongoing. More than 500 refugees previously registered in East Darfur have arrived in Al Lait since August seeking casual labour opportunities during the locality’s harvest period. Over 60 per cent of newly registered refugees to North Darfur are young single males.

In Sudan, about 80,000 refugees are still without access to latrines across all 10 camps. In some cases over 70 people have to use a single communal latrine.

7% of South Sudanese refugees currently live in semi-permanent shelters in the region.

The high percentage of children among the South Sudanese refugee population makes this a children’s refugee and education crisis. Over 50% of South Sudanese refugees in the region do not have access to basic primary or secondary education and less than 1% have access to tertiary education.

Education is very basic, with insufficient learning materials and overcrowded classrooms in all countries of asylum. In Tanzania, over 17,600 Burundi refugee students are attending classes under trees.

In Uganda’s Nakivale settlement thousands of refugee families are using overcrowded communal latrines, with risk of disease outbreaks, little privacy, and exposure of women and children in particular to protection risks.

In Uganda, limited resources means not having enough staff to ensure quality of child protection services and adequate follow up on children in care arrangements. There is one caseworker for every 150 children, and children make up some 63 per cent of the refugee population.

From January to 30 September 2018 a total of 38,390 refugees were assisted to voluntarily repatriate to Burundi from Tanzania in 88 convoys (bringing the total from September 2017 to 52,260).

The Government of Uganda with the support of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, concluded a comprehensive exercise to verify the identities of all refugees and asylum-seekers in the country, using enhanced biometric tools.

The analysis from the Verification Exercise in Uganda indicates that a majority of the refugees who were absent, originate from South Sudan and arrived between 2016 and 2017.