Interview with Bob Turner, UNMIS head of Returns, Reintegration and Recovery

A year after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and the Sudanese government on 9 January 2005, the repatriation of about 4 million southerners who were displaced during the 21-year civil war remains a big challenge.

Bob Turner is the director of the Returns, Reintegration, and Recovery unit of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS). IRIN asked him to assess the return process over the past year, as well as his expectations for 2006.

Click here to read excerpts from the interview via IRIN January 12, 2006.



Photo: Bob Turner, head of the UNMIS Returns, Rehabilitation and Reintegration Unit of UNMIS. (Shannon Egan/IRIN)
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Sudanese President holds aloft a bird symbolising peace

On January 10, 2005 with a peace treaty in hand (that he did not personally sign) Sudan's president Omar el-Bashir began a triumphant tour of his country, greeted by thousands of revellers.

A report in the Guardian described how the president, wearing a long, white chieftain's shirt over his safari suit, stopped and restarted his speech several times when onlookers regularly broke into deafening applause and began waving white pieces of cloth in signs of peace.

"Our ultimate goal is a united Sudan, which will not be built by war but by peace and development," el-Bashir said.

"You, the southerners, will be saying, 'We want a strong and huge state, a united Sudan."

"The money which we have been spending on war will now be spent on services and development in the south," he said from his heavily guarded podium.



Photo: Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir holds aloft a bird symbolising peace at a rally in Juba, Sudan Monday, Jan. 10, 2005. He visited the southern town of Malakal as part of a tour of the region to publicise the deal. He told more than 10,000 local people who packed the stadium to celebrate the end of a war: "From now on, there will be no more fighting, but development and prosperity." (AP Photo/Abd Raouf)

Material from Sudan Watch January 2005 archive: Sudan peace deal 'bad' for Darfur.