Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2014 18:53:27 +0200
South Sudan: After the Fire, Before the Rain
By Matthew Newsome,
7 April 2014
Biel Boutrosb was in his family home in Juba, South Sudan's capital, when he
heard gunfire on the evening of December 15th last year. He soon realised
that the shots were coming closer to his neighbourhood.
Mr Boutrosb, who is 32 years old and works for the South Sudan Human Rights
Society for Advocacy, based in Juba, feared that soldiers from the
presidential guard were targeting homes of suspected opponents. He fled for
his life.
He boarded a plane to Uganda and from there flew to South Africa, where he
has family. "I am still receiving death threats from government loyalists,"
he said. "If I return, my life will be endangered."
Mr Boutrosb is one of about 900,000 people forced to leave their homes since
the fighting began, and among an estimated 200,000 who have fled the
country, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR).
The strife in the oil-rich state began as a political conflict between
President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, his former vice-president, whom Mr
Kiir summarily dismissed in July last year. The situation turned violent on
December 15th 2013 when fighting erupted in a military barracks in Juba
between the two men's supporters.
In the weeks that followed, the violence quickly spread to four of the
country's ten states, driven by factions "seeking to exploit the chaos and
confusion to pursue ethnic driven agendas", said Joe Contreras, acting
spokesperson for the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).
Most of South Sudan's displaced are either hiding in the bush, packed into
crowded United Nations compounds, or languishing in refugee camps in a host
of neighbouring countries, according to UNMISS.
More than 23,000 South Sudanese have migrated to Kenya since hostilities
started last December, according to the UNHCR. Most have found refuge in the
Kakuma camp in Turkana, in north-west Kenya. At the end of January, more
than 132,000 refugees from across the region were living in Kakuma, which is
the world's second-largest refugee camp, according to the UNHCR.
The largest is in Dadaab, Kenya, about 100km from the Somali border, with
about 369,000 exiles.
In Uganda, 80,000 South Sudanese are staying in the Adjumani and Arua
refugee camps close to the border with South Sudan, while in Ethiopia,
65,000 are tented in the Leitchor camp in western Gambella, according to the
refugee agency.
More than 42,000 South Sudanese refugees are in Sudan, from which South
Sudan won its independence in 2011, concentrated in the south and western
Kordofan regions, and in White Nile state. Within South Sudan close to
80,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) are sheltering in eight makeshift
UNMISS camps.
Overcrowding has stretched the capabilities of these camps paper-thin. For
example, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a medical charity, outlined on
February 5th how the influx of 27,000 people into Juba's UN Tomping camp had
exceeded the site's carrying capacity of 5,000 and made living conditions
there almost impossible.
"Space is the biggest problem we all face in working in Tomping," MSF's
emergency coordinator, Forbes Sharp, told Africa in Fact. "It is a working
UNMISS camp, not built for housing 27,000 people. From a public health point
of view, such crowded conditions are a ticking time bomb.
Communicable diseases spread quickly in this kind of environment, especially
with such inadequate sanitation." Yet the number of IDPs continues to grow,
and MSF is battling to meet people's needs in its 15 emergency clinics
scattered throughout the country.
Despite a ceasefire between rebels and the government signed on January 23rd
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, the situation on the ground remains
tense. "The majority [of South Sudanese refugees] are still fearful of
returning home," UNHCR spokesperson Pumla Rulashe told Africa in Fact.
"Only a few have trickled back." One of those refusing to return is a
26-year-old-man who prefers to remain anonymous. "It is just a question of
security why I am here in Kenya," he said. "My house has been destroyed. If
I go back now I fear I will be killed." The young man is a Dinka, and fled
his Juba home after government forces allegedly targeted his Nuer
neighbourhood for its suspected allegiance to Mr Machar, who is of Nuer
ethnicity. He quickly sought shelter in the Tomping compound.
"I left my home as soon as I heard the gunfire on my street and went to the
UN compound for safety. The next morning I discovered that my sister,
brother and father had been killed. I could not return to my home because
all of Juba was unsafe and friends told me that my house had been
destroyed," he said.
He left the crowded base after several days because he saw living conditions
there rapidly deteriorating. He drove with a friend across the Ugandan
border and crossed over into Kenya to stay with family in Nairobi.
"I was very lucky," he said. "I could not have escaped without the help of a
friend working as a border security official who drove my car across the
border while we hid in the
<http://allafrica.com/stories/201404070001.html?viewall=1>
bootboothttp://savingsslider-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png.
And then in Uganda, the immigration official only gave me a visa because she
sympathised with our reasons for fleeing."
The refugee crisis in South Sudan may still deteriorate. A massive funding
shortfall has led the United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs to launch a new crisis response plan in early February,
appealing for $1.27 billion to meet the humanitarian needs of 3.2m people.
Meanwhile, the country's UN humanitarian coordinator, Toby Lanzer, has
warned that the rainy season--from April to October--could deepen the
country's humanitarian crisis.
The seasonal heavy rains, known to make many roads impassable, could create
havoc for thousands of people hiding in the bush without shelter or access
to food and clean water, Mr Lanzer said. Impending flooding and damage to
already scant food production could prompt more vulnerable people throughout
South Sudan to flee into neighbouring countries.
At the time of going to print, peace talks between government and rebel
forces remained stalled in Addis Ababa. South Sudan's people, in and outside
the country, desperately need their leaders to resolve the issues speedily.
They need to get back to the task of building lasting institutions in
Africa's newest country.
(image/png attachment: image003.png)