126 thE sudan handbookthough the salaries are far from enough for their family needs. There
is considerable dependence on women. Some families subsist on only
one meal a day, cooked and served by women in the evening after they
are done with work. New arrivals use kinship networks as entry points
to the town. They live with relatives or kin groups, who may also help
them find work. This leads to ethnic concentration, as migrants of the
same ethnic group cluster together.
Networks of kinship are the main source of employment and social
protection. Migrants from Darfur, for example, are engaged in menial
activities like selling water, vegetables and fruit. Some young migrants
join the army and police although there are no reliable statistics on this.
Studies show that women selling food and tea are able to make more
money than men, although they risk harassment from male customers,
particularly as most do not have the necessary licenses from health and
tax authorities. In recent years refugees from Ethiopia and Eritrea have
competed with Sudanese women in income-earning activities such as tea
and food selling and domestic work as housemaids or nannies.
In 2003 Jabarona was among the first camps to be redesignated by
the city authorities as a regular neighbourhood. The idea was to bring
services and provide plots for residents on a legal basis. IDPs who
were living in Jabarona at the start of reorganization were given tags
to ascertain their eligibility for residential plots. The process of reorga-
nizing involved large-scale demolition. It started in November 2003; the
former camp was divided into twelve blocks, each containing about two
thousand plots. By the end of 2005, nine blocks had been surveyed and
organized. The process of reorganizing Jabarona involved bulldozing
thousands of mud-brick houses. Some 25,000 families applied for the
new government-allocated plots. Those who were residents in the camp
before 1997 were given priority over later arrivals. Of these families 11,000
could afford to pay plot fees and had the necessary documents – birth
certificates, a medical assessment of age, or ID cards. But thousands of
families who could not provide such documentation were excluded.
Poor migrants and IDPs living in settlements outside the official campsThe Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors are not part of the programme of legalization of places like Jabarona.
(www.riftvalley.net).