About 60,000 people are fleeing the country each month, resulting in an “extremely rapid” rate of depopulation.
Kenya has in past complained about the refugees’ burden, and called for more funding and closure of world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab.
A total of 1.7 million South Sudanese — out of an estimated population of 12 million — have already sought refuge in neighbouring countries.
South Sudan is losing a large share of its population, a United Nations special envoy declared on Wednesday, putting pressure on Kenya that has to host a significant share of the refugees.
About 60,000 people are fleeing the country each month, resulting in an “extremely rapid” rate of depopulation, David Shearer, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (Unmiss), told reporters at a press briefing in New York.
If the current pace of depopulation is maintained, some two million South Sudanese will be refugees by the end of this year, the Unmiss leader said. More than 100,000 are expected to have crossed into Kenya by December, while about 925,000 South Sudanese are likely to reach Uganda, the UN projects.
Kenya has in past complained about the refugees’ burden, and called for more funding and closure of world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab, saying it had been infiltrated by terrorist cells. “Kenya has hosted among the largest number of refugees in the world in the last three decades and the burden our country has continued to endure remains disproportionate to support received,” Foreign minister Amina Mohamed said in an earlier statement.
“We hoped that the burden we have been shouldering in hosting huge numbers of refugees would be lifted through a coordinated strategy for the orderly and humane return and resettlement of refugees from the camps in Kenya.”
A total of 1.7 million South Sudanese — out of an estimated population of 12 million — have already sought refuge in neighbouring countries since the start of civil war in late 2013. Another 1.9 million have been displaced within South Sudan.
Mr Shearer’s comments came two days after release of a report by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations which predicted that nearly half of South Sudan’s people will have died of starvation or have been forced to leave the country by the end of this year.
“Such a rapid depopulation of a sovereign state is nearly unprecedented,” said the report co-authored by Kate Almquist, director of the US Defence Department’s Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, and Payton Knopf, a former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan.
“Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Rwanda in the throes of genocide are the closest analogues for such a tragic record,” the two analysts wrote.
These grim warnings coincide with the findings of the UN Panel of Experts that hold the South Sudan government responsible for the widespread displacement and killings. The experts’ report to the UN Security Council this week said the government side “remains the main belligerent in the war and continues to accord priority to an aggressive military approach over a political solution to the conflict”.
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