The National Returns Registry logs a name every time someone leaves Sennett Camp through the eastern gate and tells staff they are going home to the Coren Valley. This year the registry’s count stands at 6,150, a figure officials point to as evidence that resettlement conditions have improved enough for families to leave voluntarily.
Camp coordinators are not convinced the number means what the registry says it means.
“A name logged at the gate isn’t the same as a family that’s actually resettled,” said camp administrator Grace Osafo. “Some of those people came back within the month. Some never left the district. The gate log counts a departure, not a return.”
How the count is built
The registry’s methodology, set out in a technical guidance document, credits a return whenever a household head signs an exit form stating an intended destination in the Coren Valley. Staff do not follow up to confirm the household arrived or remained.
An independent audit commissioned by a Halven Basin monitoring group this spring reviewed a sample of three hundred logged returns and found that roughly two in five could not be confirmed as complete resettlements. Some households had registered at a second camp under a different name. Others had returned to Sennett within eight weeks, citing a lack of housing or work in the valley.
Auditor Dov Kessler, who led the review, said the discrepancy was less about fraud than about what the registry chooses to measure.
“The registry counts an intention,” he said. “We tried to count an outcome. Those aren’t going to match, and the gap here is around 2,300 names, give or take.”
The Registry disputes the audit’s methodology, arguing its sample size was too small to extrapolate camp-wide and that its own spot checks, conducted by telephone three months after departure, confirm roughly 90 percent of logged returns as genuine.
Why the number matters
The dispute is not academic. Regional funding for Sennett Camp is partly tied to projected caseload, and a falling returns count could be read by donors as evidence the camp’s population is shrinking on its own, reducing the case for continued support.
“Every return on that log is a number someone uses to argue the budget down,” said Osafo. “If the number is wrong, the budget conversation is wrong.”
Kessler’s group has recommended the Registry adopt a follow-up call at the six-month mark rather than relying solely on the exit form. The Registry said in a written response that it was reviewing the recommendation but noted that follow-up calls would require additional staff it does not currently have funded.
For now the count stands at 6,150, printed at the top of the Registry’s quarterly bulletin and cited in budget hearings on both sides of the debate. Osafo keeps her own tally at the gate, a simpler one: names she recognises coming back through it a second time. So far this year, by her count, that number is 340.
