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http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=81141
NAIROBI, 27 October 2008 (IRIN) - More than half of the families returning to Southern Sudan are headed by single women while 59 percent of all returnees are aged 5 to 17, a new report said.
"Spontaneous return movements show a tendency for women to return without [the] male head of household or males to leave women with the children in the place of return to either return back to the place of displacement or to a secondary place of displacement," the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a 24 October report.
This situation, the IOM noted, had resulted from lack or limited access to basic services in the villages of final destination, as well as for employment and educational reasons.
"Female headed households represent 60 percent of the total tracked households in Southern Sudan," the IOM tracking of spontaneous returns report noted.
Some 1.7 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have returned to the south since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005.
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The tracking programme gathers detailed information on numbers, demographics (sex, age) and special needs or vulnerabilities of the returnees.
According to the IOM, most returnees went to Northern Bahr el Ghazal and Southern Kordofan - 401,763 and 298,098 persons respectively. The lowest numbers were in Eastern Equatoria and Western Bahr el Ghazal States - 53,395 and 62,304 returnees, respectively.
The main return route, the IOM report noted, was from Northern to Southern Sudan, but South to South movements are also monitored.