Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 15:46:06 +0200
South Sudan: children bear brunt of man-made disaster
Despite aid agencies’ efforts, the world’s newest nation is on the brink as
its leaders fight for the spoils of power
* David Smith <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/davidsmith> in
Akobo
* , Monday 6 October 2014
*
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/06/south-sudan-food-crisis-childr
en-brunt-man-made-disaster#start-of-comments> Jump to comments (44)
Water bottle in hand and rucksack on back, his grey trousers rolled up to
reveal spindly legs, 12-year-old Gatwech boarded the first flight of his
life. His ear protectors dwarfed his head as he gazed wide-eyed through the
window of the Russian-built UN helicopter that lifted into the sky, sweeping
over lush plains and thick forests.
Gatwech crossed the invisible frontlines separating government and rebel
forces in South Sudan’s civil war. Finally, the aircraft came in to land on
a ringfenced field in the village of Akobo, deep in opposition territory,
and the boy strained to look at the excited crowd waiting under trees. He
was about to be reunited with his family for the first time after nine
arduousmonths in a displacement camp.
His best friend beamed, his aunt sang and wept and spat as a blessing, and
his uncle gave him a rather formal pat on the head. Gatwech was safe at
last. But in the world’s newest and hungriest country, every gain is
tentative and every haven fragile. Three days later, there was chaos outside
the hospital in Akobo when a cattle thief was bound, chased and whipped by a
lynch mob of soldiers, police and vigilantes including rifle-toting
children.
The febrile atmosphere is a sign that the rainy season is coming to an end
in South Sudan, raising the prospect of renewed fighting. Aid is working
here but diplomacy is not.
Famine has been staved off, at least for now, by the efforts of numerous
agencies and the UN’s biggest ever humanitarian operation in one country.
Yet bad-tempered peace talks between the warring parties have stalled,
agreements have proved hollow and the international community has failed to
apply the requisite pressure. The intransigence of two men, President Salva
Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar, is seen by many here as dragging the
country towards the abyss.
Thousands have been killed and nearly two million have fled their homes
since their war broke out last December. Oxfam and other agencies have
warned that an expected upsurge in violence could wipe out recent gains in
food security and push the number of severely hungry people up by a million
in the first three months of 2015. Describing it as a shift from crisis to
catastrophe, they say parts of the country could slide into man-made famine
early next year.
Children, who make up half the population, suffer the most. When the war
started, Gatwech – not his real name – ran for his life after government
forces attacked the town where his close family was staying. He was carrying
a pair of shoes. “I thought my parents were also running,” he recalled,
speaking Nuer through an interpreter. “But when I reached the UN camp, they
were not there and I thought maybe they were killed. I was very afraid
because I heard a lot of gunshots and artillery.”
Nearly 100,000 people are crammed into UN compounds across the country for
their own protection, often in inhumane and unsanitary conditions. Gatwech
found himself sleeping on a mat on the floor. “I didn’t have anything to do.
It was boring. The day was very long,” he said. The boy, who hopes to become
a doctor one day, also witnessed attacks on the camp from government troops.
“It was a dangerous life. I saw a lot of dead bodies.”
But months later came the news that Gatwech’s parents had been located in
Akobo by a family tracing and reunification programme coordinated by Save
the Children. It is long, complicated and logistically difficult work: at
present 5,660 children have been registered as missing in South Sudan and
only 393 reunited with their families. “It’s a needle in a haystack,” one
aid worker said.
When Gatwech landed in Akobo last week, his friend Isaac was there to greet
him in a crowd of villagers and wandering cows. The 13-year-old said: “I was
very happy. I missed him. We weren’t optimistic because we thought in the
long run the only way he would come is when there is peace in South Sudan.”
And peace remains a distant prospect, with Kiir and Machar seemingly
hellbent on a military solution. Kiir told the UN general assembly last
month: “The conflict in South Sudan is purely a political struggle for
power, not an ethnic conflict as reported.” Yet violence has broken out
along ethnic lines in many parts of the country, pitting forces loyal to
Kiir, a Dinka, against those of his former deputy Machar, a Nuer.
Economic self-interest is also fuelling the conflict. A report last month by
the Enough Project noted: “The country’s competing privileged elites are
sacrificing their own people’s lives to secure the political and economic
benefits – including massive state-corroding corruption – derived from
control of the state.”
Political and military leaders maintain “lavish homes” in Kenya, Uganda,
Ethiopia, South Africa and Australia, the report continued. “Families of the
leaders of South Sudan’s warring parties are living in neighbouring
countries and their children are attending the finest schools available.
Meanwhile, the education system back in South Sudan has collapsed.”
The Enough Project said the South Sudanese government had received $38m
(£24m) in weapons and ammunition from China since the start of the civil
war, while there is evidence that opposition forces may have been resupplied
with ammunition by Sudan, from which the country gained independence in
2011.
Akobo, a remote cluster of tukuls, or mud huts, in Jonglei state, near the
Ethiopian border, was the scene of an infamous massacre in 1983. Last
December young Nuer men stormed a UN base looking for Dinka civilians
sheltering inside and killed two Indian peacekeepers. Since then the village
has been overwhelmed by displaced people, putting pressure on food, schools
and hospitals, and driving market prices up. Mobile phone networks have been
cut off by the government.
Akobo is now firmly controlled by the rebels, who include large chunks of
what used to be the national army, and in the central market there is a
sense of something approaching normality. But few expect it to last. Koang
Rambang, 37, the county commissioner, predicts famine and even genocide.
“Akobo is the first town the government are targeting because they consider
it a supply route and escape route for the community,” he said. “We’ll do
our best to make sure citizens are aware of the threats they are facing.”
Talking into a satellite phone and flanked by soldiers wielding guns,
Rambang is now firmly in Machar’s camp because, he says, it is the pragmatic
choice. “People call us the rebels but this is the resistance movement to
the onslaught, the killings by Salva Kiir. I have no interest in rebelling
to go running in the bush for no reason. But if someone wants to kill me
because I am Nuer, then I have no choice. I am ready for peaceful solution
but if people choose to go forcefully, I am also ready for that.”
In predominantly Dinka areas of South Sudan there are similar accounts of
brutal treatment at the hands of the Nuers and hostility towards Machar. In
Akobo, it is the Dinka president who is deeply unpopular. Rambang, 37, said:
“The communities have no trust in Salva Kiir’s leadership. The solution to
this crisis is to have Kiir step aside and let some change happen. The other
party might want Machar to step aside. I’m sure Machar will compromise
because I have spoken to him several times.”
The war has caused a surge in child brides, according to Rambang, with
families pushing girls as young as 13 into marriage so they will receive a
cattle dowry. But the biggest crisis in Akobo, he says, is food security.
Harvests, markets and trade routes have been disrupted. One in three
children are acutely malnourished, with consequences including increased
vulnerability to malaria and failure to attend school.
The village borders a river where children splash and play and climb trees,
exotic blue-and-red birds swoop low and lone canoeists gently push through a
surface almost as smooth as glass. It takes 45 minutes on a motorboat to
reach the village of Dangjok. Here soldiers stand guard, bullet belts around
their shoulders, the Nuer initiation pattern of six parallel horizontal
scars on their foreheads. The local chief works at a desk in a gloomy
corrugated shed where rocket-propelled grenades litter the floor and bats
hang from the wood beams.
Save the Children and a local NGO, Nile Hope, are running an outpatient
therapeutic centre where, in a modest building of mud walls and thatched
roof, malnourished babies are registered, weighed, measured for height and
arm circumference and given the peanut-based paste Plumpy’Nut or, in severe
cases, referred to hospital for urgent treatment. Right now the preventative
measure appears to be working, with hospital admissions down to single
figures.
Nellie James, assistant nutrition coordinator at Nile Hope, said some
mothers carry their children for two hours to be here. “None of them give
up. These mothers are very strong and very determined. Here in Akobo people
value children more. A mother can go two days without eating but the child
has to eat.”
Among more than 30 mothers waiting their turn last week was Nyanhial Ruot,
who fled the city of Malakal nine months ago. She was on the main street
when government tanks opened fire. “Children were crying,” she recalled,
wearing a rainbow coloured dress, sandals and yellow headscarf patterned
with a red rose. “I’ve seen people dying in front of me. Most of them were
mothers and children who were not able to run. We turned left and that’s why
we’re alive. Those running in front were killed.”
Ruot, 25, and her family trekked for two months to reach Dangjok, but now
her four-year-old daughter and two-year-old son are suffering vomiting and
diarrhoea. “I’m worried about my children’s lives,” she said. “Before the
crisis we got medicine in the market. Now there is none or the prices have
gone up.”
A small paracetamol tablet has risen in price from 10 to 25 South Sudanese
pounds (roughly $3 to $8), she complained. Food is also scarce. “We have
planted some sorghum and maize but there is not enough for the children. In
the dry season we collect fruits, grasses and leaves.”
That Ruot and hundreds of mothers like her are receiving help, and that
South Sudan is not yet officially in famine is a notable victory for the aid
agencies. Ultimately, however, it is only a sticking plaster. One in seven
people are still at food crisis or emergency level and 50,000 children could
die by the end of the year. All the good work could be undone if Kiir and
Machar fail to make peace, or are not compelled to do so. The Enough Project
has called for punitive measures including seizing the homes, bank accounts
and shell companies of anyone undermining the peace process.
Tariq Reibl, head of Oxfam’s programme in South Sudan, said: “If famine
comes to South Sudan it will come through the barrel of a gun. This is a
man-made crisis, not one caused by the vagaries of the weather, and though
humanitarian aid is vital it cannot fix a political problem.
“The international community is much better at saving lives than it is at
helping solve the political problems that put lives in peril. Nine months of
the softly-softly approach to peace negotiations has failed. If the
international community really wants to avert a famine then it has to make
bold diplomatic efforts to bring both sides to end the fighting.”
* News <http://www.theguardian.com/uk>
* World news <http://www.theguardian.com/world>
* South Sudan <http://www.theguardian.com/world/south-sudan>
Series: Guardian Africa network
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/series/guardian-africa-network>
Previous
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/03/kenyan-film-explores-gay-life-
in-a-homophobic-country> | Next
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/06/south-africa-race-black-profes
sors> | Index
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/series/guardian-africa-network>
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/series/guardian-africa-network> Guardian
Africa Network
South Sudan: children bear brunt of man-made disaster
Despite aid agencies’ efforts, the world’s newest nation is on the brink as
its leaders fight for the spoils of power
*
<https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.theguardian.com/wor
ld/2014/oct/06/south-sudan-food-crisis-children-brunt-man-made-disaster>
Share 101
*
*
* inShare <javascript:void(0);> 13
*
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/06/south-sudan-food-crisis-childr
en-brunt-man-made-disaster>
http://static.guim.co.uk/static/74214e9be05c32f5e5796e00a83734f031c51027/com
mon/images/icon-email.pngEmail
* <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/davidsmith> David Smith
·
* David Smith <http://www.theguardian.com/profile/davidsmith> in
Akobo
*
* The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian> , Monday 6
October 2014
*
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/06/south-sudan-food-crisis-childr
en-brunt-man-made-disaster#start-of-comments> Jump to comments (44)
Women carry sacks of maize flour at a food distribution point in Juba, South
SudanFamine has been staved off for now by the efforts of many agencies and
the biggest ever UN humanitarian operation in one country. Photograph:
AFP/Getty Images
(image/jpeg attachment: image001.jpg)
(image/jpeg attachment: image002.jpg)
(image/jpeg attachment: image003.jpg)
(image/jpeg attachment: image004.jpg)