WUNRN
SOUTH SUDAN - CHILDREN IN THE FIRING
LINE - INJURIES, MALNUTRITION, KILLINGS - MANY DISPLACED, HAVING ONLY MOTHER
PARENT
Photo:
UNHCR/F.Noy - Sudan
children at high risk of malnutrition
NAIROBI,
25 April 2014 (IRIN) – The conflict in South Sudan is taking a heavy toll on
children who are being killed or injured in attacks and recruited into armed
groups. They are also witnessing traumatic events and missing out on school.
For the youngest malnutrition is an ever-present threat.
On 17 April, dozens of armed rebel youth attacked the UN Mission in South Sudan base in Bor, Jonglei State, where they indiscriminately shot at those seeking refuge there, leaving 58 dead and over 100 injured. Some of those killed and injured were children.
Condemning the attack, Leila Zerrougui, special representative of the UN Secretary-General for children and armed conflict, in a statement said “children continue to be victims of the recent conflict in South Sudan and this must stop.”
“These attacks and violations not only leave a permanent scar on these children, but they also affect their overall sense of safety and security, especially when places that they go to in desperation, and are designated as safe places of shelter, also become places of attacks,” Zerrougui added, also condemning the involvement of children as fighters.
50,000 under-five children could die
“Many children and their families [in most cases the father is absent] live in
dire conditions in displacement centres, under trees and in makeshift tents
with limited access to food and nutrition, water and sanitation, protection and
education,” Betty Gorle, Plan International’s emergency response, advocacy and
communications coordinator, told IRIN.
Children are relying on UN World Food Programme food rations and begging from host communities, added Gorle, noting that “some have also spent many nights hungry or collecting wild fruits.” According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) “dangerous levels of malnutrition threaten a quarter of a million children in South Sudan, and unless they are reached with treatment, up to 50,000 children under age five could die.”
Many children are also traumatized. “The children have also witnessed or experienced traumatizing events and as result some of the children report having sleepless nights. Many have lost their loved ones in the war,” added Gorle.
“Dangerous
levels of malnutrition threaten a quarter of a million children in South Sudan,
and unless they are reached with treatment, up to 50,000 children under age
five could die.”
IRIN recently drew attention to the link between trauma and malnutrition in the Central African Republic.
Plan estimates that about 400,000 children are displaced. “But the situation is getting worse with recent fighting in Bentiu [Unity State]… Agencies, including Plan, speculate an increase in the number of displaced children, orphans and separated children,” added Gorle.
On 14-15 April targeted violence in Bentiu Town left hundreds dead and also forced many people to flee to the UN base outside the town. “Just a few days ago we had 4,000 people here, now we are at over 22,000 civilians,” said Toby Lanzer, the humanitarian coordinator in South Sudan, in a UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) video highlighting the situation in Bentiu.
OCHA estimates that at least 916,900 have been internally displaced by violence in South Sudan since conflict erupted there in mid-December 2013 following a political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar. While the fighting initially began in the capital, Juba, conflict has gradually spread throughout the country with the northern and central regions being caught up in recent clashes. Thousands of South Sudanese have crossed the borders into neighbouring countries.
Psychosocial support key
Alan Paul, the country director of Save the Children in South Sudan, emphasized
the need for psychosocial support for children and youth who have experienced
conflict, violence and displacement.
“Basic PSS [psychosocial support] through Child Friendly Spaces, return to education, and engagement in community activities is particularly important for IDP [internally displaced] children whose daily lives have been totally disrupted, who are now living in unfamiliar places with unknown people, and whose normal protective structure (i.e. extended family network, neighbours, teachers, church leaders, chief/local leader system) has broken down,” Paul told IRIN in an email.
Child friendly spaces “support the resilience and well-being of children and young people through community organized, structured activities conducted in a safe, child friendly, and stimulating environment,” according to UNICEF.
A professional medical response for children with more complicated psychosocial needs is also required.
“There are many children who display behavioural problems and severe emotional distress due to the experiences they have had during the crisis. There are limited services available throughout the country for children and parents with more severe PSS [psychosocial support] needs, and much more needs to be offered,” added Paul.
Many children have also been separated from their families. “Many families have now travelled long distances and some have crossed state and international borders,” he noted.
“As the rainy season begins we expect to see another large population movement that will make tracing and reunification of children already separated a huge challenge, and may cause further separations as communities decide to move to different locations to escape flooding.” According to OCHA, IDPs are moving back and forth from Bor, Jonglei State, to Mingkaman, Lakes State.
Child protection needs
Plan international is assisting children with water and sanitation services,
food and nutrition, protection and education in Central Equatoria , Eastern
Equatoria, Jonglei and Lakes states. The organization is also setting up
temporary learning spaces.
“This conflict has affected education, with many children and teachers moving to new locations and others having left the country. There are now children crowding in the few classes available with no teachers,” explained Plan’s Gorle. In Awerial County, Lakes State, for example, one temporary learning space meant for 50 pupils is currently accommodating over 200.
Save the Children is also working in Awerial and in Jonglei State to improve the psychosocial well-being of children. “Currently cases of children with more severe needs are referred to partners on the ground offering services where these are available. However, services are very limited and access is restricted to many of the most affected areas, which are by definition the areas where the population is most in need of support,” said Paul.
He recommended the integration of child protection into all humanitarian services. “It is vital that all humanitarian actors identify and respond to the needs of unaccompanied and separated children in all humanitarian interventions (e.g. ensuring adequate food rations and shelter/NFI [non-food item] materials are given, and ensuring access to clean water and sanitation services).”
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AMID SOUTH SUDAN VIOLENCE, SPECIAL HEALTH RISKS FOR WOMEN & GIRLS - VIOLENCE BLOCKING HEALTH FACILITIES & SERVICES
1-30, 2014 - As armed conflict continues in South Sudan, CARE-supported clinics are helping people in desperate need of health care. Ayuen Jooh Luala, 25 years old and in labor with twins, managed to get from her village Wangulei to the CARE-supported health care unit in nearby Lualajokbil, where her first baby was born at 10 a.m. on Thursday, January 9. But as attendants awaited the second child’s arrival, Ms. Jooh began to experience complications. In a part of South Sudan like Twic East, Jonglei--one of the most conflict-affected states in South Sudan—the delivery could have ended badly.
“We came across this mother while doing a supervision visit to the health unit in Lualajokbil,” CARE staffer John Chol said. “She developed serious fits as well as bleeding.”
Ms. Jooh was transferred to the larger Primary Healthcare Clinic in Panyagor, Jonglei, which is 30 minutes away but better staffed and supplied. Thanks to health workers there, the second twin—a boy--was born several hours after his older brother.
The mother “is now doing fine in our postnatal ward with her two boys,” Mr. Chol said.
The healthy outcome for Ms. Jooh and her two newborns is a rare happy ending amid violence that has taken more than 1,000 lives in South Sudan since December 15. The conflict has brought more pain for a population already traumatized from almost half a century of fighting for independence.
“It is likely that many of the women going into labor in areas where there is conflict are not able to access hospitals or clinics because of the violence. They are giving birth without any support,” said Aimee Ansari, Country Director for CARE in South Sudan. “We are concerned that the insecurity, which has now alarmingly spread across the country, makes it even more difficult for women to access health care services, putting mothers and children at even greater risk.”
At the CARE-supported clinic in Panyagor, located about 108 kms north of Jonglei’s state capital, Bor, County Health Director James Magok said only women with the most serious cases were braving the insecurity to access medical care.
Even before the current crisis, South Sudan had one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world.
“South Sudan is one of the most hostile environments for women and girls,” says Ansari. “The current situation is putting them at even greater risk of rape and other forms of gender-based violence. Women who are displaced as a result of fleeing conflict lose the protection of their homes and families. They are very vulnerable and need our help.”
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http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/Media.aspx?IsMediaPage=true&LangID=E
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Opening remarks by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay at a press conference in South Sudan, Juba, 30 April 2014
SOUTH SUDAN ON THE VERGE OF CATASTROPHE
As you may be aware I visited South Sudan almost exactly two years ago, in early May 2012. The new state was less than a year old, and while there were many human rights issues to discuss, and problems that needed rectifying, there was still plenty of optimism.
It therefore greatly saddens me that this second visit is the result of a drastic deterioration in the situation with a full-blown internal conflict taking place accompanied by numerous grave human rights violations. After the horrendous mass killings in Bentiu and Bor two weeks ago, the Security Council requested my Office to undertake an investigation, and the Secretary-General subsequently requested me personally to come and talk to the country’s leaders. He also requested his Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng to visit South Sudan at the same time.
The murder of hundreds of people, many of them civilians, in Bentiu, and the retaliatory assault on displaced people sheltering in the UN compound in Bor, which led to the death of at least 50 more men, women and children, have starkly underlined how close South Sudan is to calamity. Without the strong intervention of Indian peacekeepers, hundreds more might have been killed.
The deadly mix of recrimination, hate speech, and revenge killings that has developed relentlessly over the past four and a half months seems to be reaching boiling point, and I have been increasingly concerned that neither South Sudan’s political leaders nor the international community at large seem to perceive quite how dangerous the situation now is. Unfortunately virtually everything I have seen or heard on this mission has reinforced the view that the country’s leaders, instead of seizing their chance to steer their impoverished and war-battered young nation to stability and greater prosperity, have instead embarked on a personal power struggle that has brought their people to the verge of catastrophe.
Mr Dieng and I have conveyed the Secretary-General’s and our own concerns to President Salva Kiir, and five senior Ministers in his Government – namely Ministers of Cabinet Affairs, Defence, Justice, Finance and Foreign Affairs – here in Juba.
Yesterday, with the assistance of UNMISS we flew by helicopter to Nassir, where we held similar talks with the opposition leader Riek Machar. On the way, we visited the UN camp in Bor which was attacked by an armed mob on 17 April and listened to the concerns of some of the survivors and heard their descriptions of this brutal assault which appeared to have the sole aim of killing as many civilians in the camp as possible, on the basis of their ethnicity. We were unfortunately not able to visit Bentiu on this visit, but we discussed the attack there with Dr. Machar, since the mass killings in Bentiu were carried out by forces associated with the SPLA in Opposition which he leads. He assured us that he is carrying out his own investigation into what happened and that he will do his utmost to stop his forces from committing similar revenge attacks on civilians.
I welcome this commitment to investigate, as well as the investigations the Government says it is undertaking into the mass killings of civilians in Juba in mid-December which set off the escalation of ethnic-based revenge killings that have ensued over the four and a half months since then. But, if the people of South Sudan are to believe that there is accountability, these investigations must move swiftly beyond statements of intent to action: in other words arrests and prosecution after investigations conducted by an independent body, in a transparent process consistent with international standards and principles. This must be carried out quickly and the outcome must be published. Without accountability, there is nothing to deter others from committing similar summary executions and mass killings. Ordinary people – those who are most defenceless – and the civil society organizations and religious leaders whom I and my team met all speak of their great fear, and their despair at the situation their political leaders have inflicted on them.
The slaughter in Bentiu and Bor was simply the latest in a long list of similar tit-for-tat attacks in towns and villages in many parts of the country, which have increasingly involved armed Dinka and Nuer targeting each other’s civilian populations, as well as foreigners. Many such attacks have gone largely unnoticed or unreported at the international level, but have served to accentuate the spiral of hatred and violence within South Sudan itself, with the Bentiu and Bor killings setting off further shockwaves in various tense ethnically-mixed areas around the country, and in the diaspora.
The towns of Bentiu and Malakal, situated in the oil producing region near the border with Sudan, have changed hands at least six times each since fighting broke out in mid-December, and there have been dozens of other violent incidents across a vast swathe of territory spanning the north, north-east and south of the country. These, and an increasing number of examples of incitement to violence on the basis of ethnicity carried out by elements on all sides, should ring loud alarm bells and inject much greater urgency into the peace talks being carried out under the auspices of the regional East Africa bloc, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Addis Ababa.
It is essential that the South Sudanese people and the international community impress on the country’s political leaders that they must stop blindly dragging their people down the path of self-destruction. Mr Dieng and I have warned those same leaders that current and future investigations will inevitably examine the extent to which political and military leaders either knew, should have known, or failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by themselves or by subordinates under their effective authority and control.
With the rainy season just starting, we also urged the leaders to show more concern both for the 1.2 million people displaced inside South Sudan, or in neighbouring countries, and the many other South Sudanese who are now in real danger of facing famine, because the conflict has meant that this planting season will almost certainly be missed with devastating results on the country’s food supplies. If famine does take hold later in the year – and the humanitarian agencies are deeply fearful that it will – responsibility for it will lie squarely with the country’s leaders who agreed to a cessation of hostilities in January and then failed to observe it themselves, while placing all the blame on each other.
I was appalled by the apparent lack of concern about the risk of famine displayed by both leaders, when I raised the issue. The reaction to a call for 30 days of tranquility to allow people to go home to plant – although it may already be too late for this with the rains starting – was luke-warm: both leaders said they would if the other did, then made it clear they did not trust the other’s words. The prospect of widespread hunger and malnutrition being inflicted on hundreds of thousands of their people, because of their personal failure to resolve their differences peacefully, did not appear to concern them very much.
If, in the very near future, there is no peace deal, no accountability, no space to rebuild trust and promote reconciliation, and insufficient funds to cope with a looming humanitarian disaster, I shudder to think where South Sudan is heading. After so many decades of conflict and economic neglect, the South Sudanese deserve better than this, especially from their own leaders – but also from the international community, which has been slow to act. To give just one example: in December, the Security Council agreed that the number of UNMSS peacekeepers should be increased from 7,700 to 13,200, but the contributing countries have still not supplied some two thirds of the extra desperately needed troops.
I also urge donor countries to respond quickly to the humanitarian agencies appeal for funds, as well as applying their full political weight to the peace effort. The UN estimates that there are already 4.9 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and that number is likely to climb, and their needs are likely to become more acute, if the fighting and violence are not halted immediately, and the international community does not lend more support.
The list of alarming statistics is long. Here are a few more: UNMISS unquestionably saved thousands of lives, when it opened the gates of several of its compounds to people fleeing deadly attacks. Some 80,000 people are now sheltering in these compounds. UNICEF reports that more than 9,000 children have been recruited into armed forces by both sides. 32 schools have been taken over by military forces, and there have been more than 20 attacks on clinics and health centres. Many women and girls have been raped, often brutally and sometimes by several fighters. Others have been abducted. Children have also been killed during indiscriminate attacks on civilians by both sides.
How much worse does it have to get, before those who can bring this conflict to an end, especially President Kiir and Dr. Machar, decide to do so?”