Some 50 internally displaced (IDP) teachers and 200 of their
dependents have been assisted home by IOM to South Sudan from
Khartoum since November 2006 as part of an effort to attract
professionals who can help in the rebuilding of the South.

Many of these teachers have spent almost two decades displaced
in the Sudanese capital after fleeing to the north due to the long
running civil war between North and South Sudan which ended with
the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in early
January 2005.

Their return home into teaching jobs has been facilitated by IOM
in close cooperation with the Ministry of Education of the
Government of South Sudan (GoSS). An additional 28 teachers and
their dependents are preparing to return to teaching jobs in Unity
and Eastern Equatoria States in May.

The programme aims to attract qualified individuals with skills
in the health, education, engineering and vocational sectors among
the millions of internally displaced Sudanese and the Sudanese
diaspora at large and match them to concrete job vacancies in
either the public or private sector.

Funded by the Danish Development Agency (DANIDA), the programme
not only builds on IOM's long running experience of bringing back
skills to help in post-war reconstruction such as in Rwanda, Bosnia
and Herzegovina (BiH) and Afghanistan, but complements other
efforts by IOM to engage the Sudanese diaspora including an
initiative to link Sudanese health professionals in the United
Kingdom with Sudanese government structures.

This included the recent organizing of a dialogue by video link
between London and Khartoum allowing the Sudanese diaspora and
various Sudanese government departments to exchange information and
share views on the different ways that the diaspora could
contribute to the development of health services and health care in
the African country.

The success of this encounter led IOM to organize a further
meeting between Dr. Theophilus Ochang, Minister of Health for the
Government of South Sudan and IDP doctors and other health
professionals currently living in Khartoum and interested in
returning home.

Telling the IDPs how badly needed their skills and services were
in the South, he added, "This is not an undertaking of a few years.
It is a job of a lifetime."

For further information, please contact:

Simona Opitz

IOM Khartoum

Tel: +249 912 339 700

E-mail: "mailto:sopitz@iom.int">sopitz@iom.int