Regional Intention Survey of South Sudanese Refugees in Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of The Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda (June 2019)

The South Sudan situation is currently the largest refugee situation on the African continent. There are over 2.2 million refugees spread across Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the Central African Republic (CAR) a further 1.8 million people are displaced internally in South Sudan. An estimated 140,000 South Sudanese spontaneously returnees are reported to have returned to South Sudan from November 2018 to date.

The South Sudan situation continues to be characterized as a children's tragedy with children constituting over 65 percent of the refugee population. The Revitalised Agreement for the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) foresees the formation of a Government of National Unity (GNU) with all the parties in agreement including the leader of the SPLA IO and first vice president by May 2019.

In November 2018, it was agreed during the Kampala Representatives meeting that intention surveys should be conducted for South Sudanese refugees in all countries of asylum. This was further concretized in March 2019, during the EHA/GLR planning meeting; here it was decided that UNHCR country representations of CAR, Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Sudan, Ethiopia would ensure that a rapid intention survey of South Sudanese refugees in their respective asylum countries is carried out before May 2019, in line with the agreed calendar of the R-ARCSS.

The Intention Survey was a cross-sectional survey conducted among the over 2.2 million South Sudanese refugees living in six countries of asylum using a stratified random sampling approach to survey 6,964 refugees (heads of households) in 15 camps selected across the region. In each location, sample size estimation assumed a 95 per cent confidence level, and a margin of error of 7 per cent; sample was drawn taking into account the location, place of origin, ethnicity, year of arrival to the country of asylum and gender of the head of household. The confidence intervals were taken into consideration in all the tables and analysis. Security, access and logistical constraints restricted sampling in some locations, therefore weighting was applied to adjust for unequal selection probabilities in each of the 15 locations. The findings of this report are representative of the return intentions of refugee households in these 15 camps. Data was collected through in-person interviews using a harmonised survey that was conducted concurrently in the six countries in May 2019 with a mobile data collection tool (KoBo Toolkit). Questionnaires were administered to consenting refugees aged 12 years and above. Children below 12 years of age were excluded from the survey.