Enhancing Conducive Environment for Returnees and Host Community Members in Um Dukhum Locality

Objectives

This project is in response to the critical humanitarian and protection needs in the Um Dukhum Locality in Central Darfur. It is linked to Project No: SUD-17/ER/110751 in OPS. It aims to strengthen the resilience and self-reliance of returnees and host community members and facilitate durable solutions for displaced populations. Specifically, the project seeks to improve the enabling environment for peaceful coexistence in the local communities by strengthening community organizations and collective institutional capacities, ensuring social cohesion and reduction of tensions. It will establish community centres and strengthen community based conflict resolution mechanisms as well as strengthening the role of national rule of law and justice institutions to boost safety, peace and security at the local level. As youth have been identified to be a particular risk and potential, and often excluded from peace building and social cohesion processes, more innovation and creativity is needed to ensure that these groups are engaged. The project will therefore benefit from the recently launched UNDP Innovation Lab which will support in bringing new, locally sourced solutions to the targeted communities. The project is targeting 5,070 direct beneficiaries from three communities (Garaaya, Magan and Beltibei) in the Umdukhun locality in Central Darfur State. According to recent inter-agency assessment conducted in the Locality, Um Dukhum has witnessed one of the highest numbers of returnees in Sudan since 2013 and reaching its peak in 2016, with about 80,000 returnees reported so far. The majority of people have returned from Chad as well as from within the country. The locality has experienced some of the worst tribal clashes over land rights and grazing areas since 2013 with continued spiral triggers coupled with the lack of and or weak rule of law an just institutions. The continued influx of returnees and other displaced people into these localities is gradually stretching the carrying capacity of the area resulting in mounting tensions that are likely to re-ignite conflicts if not intervened. For this reason, the need to intervene in these communities has become very critical.