In July 2016, people fleeing renewed fighting in South Sudan waited to be registered at the Elegu collection point in Uganda. UNHCR reported 5,015 crossings over three days, with more than 90 percent of the new arrivals women and children under eighteen.
The registration line was not the end of displacement. It was the entrance through which arrivals were counted, identities and families recorded, and people connected to reception and assistance. A sudden increase placed immediate pressure on that administrative capacity.
This wait should not be romanticised as orderly flight. People who had just escaped armed violence were waiting for the host system to record that they had arrived.