The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres has promised to “tell the chiefs of the rich people” in the world that more must be done urgently to improve the lives of the millions of people in Africa.

Guterres was speaking at a UNHCR school that is currently being built as the only school to serve the surrounding community of more than 28,000 people. He told the crowd that the refugee agency was doing as much as it could with the limited amount of funds available to it.

He said, “can help with some schools, some health centres, but we have not the money to help with everything you need.”

This led him in his cry for more funds to be given from the international community for development aid to the southern region of the country.

Guterres called for a clear distinction to be drawn between funds for development aid, economic growth and peace for the region.

“If we want Ugandans to be in Uganda, Sudanese in Sudan and Portuguese in Portugal, we must stop war. But it is very difficult to have peace if everybody is poor, if people don’t have enough to eat, if children don’t have schools,” Guterres said according to the Sudan Tribune.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees was speaking on the seventh day of his planned ten day visit to the region, and his speech was welcomed by huge applause from hundreds of the local community gathered.

In particular the crowd reacted positively when he told, “I want everybody in the world to have a home.”

Sudan is expecting thousands of displaced people from the civil war to begin to return to their homes from the neighbouring countries. The UNHCR is working in Yei and other South Sudanese communities to build schools and health clinics to improve the conditions that people have to return to, and to help them rebuild their lives, and finally have a long-term future in their homeland.

The meeting saw singing, drumming and dancing as the UN representative found out more first-hand how the needs of the poor community were desperate for support.

A young former refugee who had recently returned to the region after a long stay in Uganda, showed her appreciation for the UNHCR’s efforts in building the new school. She said, “When we heard the school was being constructed, we gave praise to the Lord.”

Also to a rapturous round of applause she told Guterres, “We are begging you to let us have an adult literacy class to learn A, B, C, D.”

The UNHCR is the only aid agency that is currently active in Yei, and has progressed far beyond its regular mandate to undertake development-like activities.

Guterres has previously told South Sudan’s top leaders that UNHCR expects large numbers of refugees from the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia in the organised return.

It is estimated that more than 500,000 Sudanese refugees are waiting outside the country, and this is in addition to more than 4.5 million estimated as being displaced within Sudan. All this excluding the 200,000 refugees and 1.8 million displaced people that have fled Darfur over the past two years of trouble there.

On Tuesday Guterres will visit the Kakuma refugee camp, home to more than 66,000 Sudanese refugees in northern Kenya, before returning to Geneva, Switzerland later this week.