ABYEI VOCATIONAL TRAINING CENTRE

Abyei Area suffered violent conflicts that saw the destruction of infrastructure, displacement of families and directly affected the education opportunities for children and youth among others spheres of life. IOM (international Organization of Migration) has been conducting several consultations with youths, women, Ministry of Labour, Infrastructure and Education, and among people with disabilities in the Area. These show a huge vocational skill gap among youth, men and women in the area. The UNISFA-recruitment consists of unskilled persons with limited capacity or source for skilled personnel from the neighbouring states of Abyei. The creates aggravated tensions between Abyei community and the neighboring states, but also between the clans of Abyei. Subsequently, the technical and vocational skill training in Abyei is viewed as one of the ways of transforming resources-based conflicts Abyei Vocational Training Centre (VTC) is educating local youth to relevant jobs in the so-called Abyei Box. Due to a prolonged decision process of which nationality the Abyei people should have, there is no sufficient educational possibilities in the area. This results in a migration of young talent out of the box to cities as Wau, Juba, and Khartoum, where they can get the education, they would like. With its learning program of five different choices of certificates the VTC seeks to solve some of the lack of local possibilities. This is done collaboration with UNISFA, which is the biggest employer in the Abyei Box.