Food Shortages and Sexual Assault for South Sudan’s Displaced [our hearts and prayers go to the Sudanese]

South Sudanese soldiers and displaced families at the Anglican church compound in Juba, the capital, last month. Credit Reuters        

International New York Times | 4 August 2016

JUBA, South Sudan — At a sprawling displacement camp on the outskirts of the capital, women have faced a wrenching choice: risk starvation or sexual assault.

When her family ran out of food last month, Angelina Nhokmar, a 20-year-old mother of two, ventured outside the camp’s gates. She said she was lucky to have made it to the market and back unharmed, because dozens of women were raped by government soldiers in recent weeks as they made the same journey.

“It’s not safe,” she said, tossing handfuls of sorghum into a pot of boiling water. “Our enemies are outside.”

The civil war that ripped apart South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, ended on paper months ago.

But an eruption of clashes between the country’s rival factions in July put a chokehold on regular food distribution for the tens of thousands of people stranded in United Nations-run displacement camps. As families struggled to find sustenance, they endured an increase in health care crises, ethnic tensions and sexual violence.

Nearly 30,000 people have been sheltering at United Nations sites around the capital, Juba, since South Sudan erupted into civil war in 2013. For more than two years, soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir — who belongs to the Dinka ethnic group, South Sudan’s largest — battled troops led by Riek Machar of the Nuer ethnic group, which is believed to be the second largest.

Tens of thousands of people lost their lives in the war, and troops on both sides committed human rights abuses against civilians on a devastating scale.

A peace deal officially ended the fighting last year. Mr. Machar, who had served as vice president before being fired in 2013, agreed to become Mr. Kiir’s deputy again and moved back to Juba in April.

But then fighting broke out again between the two sides on July 7, killing hundreds. Mr. Machar’s residence was destroyed, and he fled the capital. He has refused to return to Juba unless more international troops are deployed. Mr. Kiir opposes this, arguing that the 12,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops already stationed here are enough.

For years, the displacement camps have been worlds unto themselves: communities complete with churches, shops and schools. But they are also plagued by overcrowding, recurring shortages of basic goods, and the uncertainty faced by residents who have no idea when, if ever, they will feel safe enough to leave.

So they stay, cloistered inside barbed-wire fences guarded by United Nations troops who have failed to keep peace in the capital or even to prevent assaults just outside the camps’ perimeters.

Sexual assaults in Juba surged last month, to at least 217 reported cases, the United Nations human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said Thursday in a statement. Members of South Sudan’s own national army, he said, seemed to be responsible for most of the assaults. And most of the victims, he added, were displaced Nuer women and girls.

Many were women living in the camps who ventured out to the markets when food ran out. Others were fleeing the clashes and making their way to the displacement sites for the first time.

The civilians who came to these camps in 2013 were overwhelmingly Nuer. Last week, thousands of them demonstrated against Mr. Kiir for recognizing a new vice president to take Mr. Machar’s place, calling it a violation of the peace deal.

Such a gathering would be unimaginable now in central Juba. The streets of the capital are firmly under the control of the president’s forces, though they are still tense. Many properties have been destroyed, and many more looted — often by men wearing army uniforms.

International partners have also suffered, including the United Nations peacekeeping mission, which lost two Chinese soldiers to crossfire inside the camp last month, and the World Food Program, whose main warehouse in South Sudan was looted from top to bottom in one of the worst such episodes the organization has experienced in years.

It wasn’t just the food, which totaled about 4,500 metric tons and consisted mostly of nutritional supplements for children and pregnant or nursing mothers, according to a spokeswoman, Challiss McDonough.

“Everything was stripped,” she said. “Technical equipment, generators, fuel stocks — every single thing was gone.”

Also stolen were several trucks specially outfitted to deliver food across the country, a near-impossible task for normal vehicles in the current rainy season. That means the warehouse looting in Juba, which would have required a herculean effort involving hundreds of people over several days, will have ripple effects all across this desperately hungry country.

Last week, the World Food Program, which still has a smaller warehouse in the vicinity of the capital, delivered a new shipment of food to the camps. But there is not enough for everyone. People said they had been asked to share their rations with thousands of newcomers.

This has led to some friction, said Charles Longa, 25, a new arrival. Like many of the most recently displaced, he is not Nuer but Equatorian, a catchall term encompassing ethnic groups from the country’s diverse south.

“The people who have been living here for a long time are telling us we’d better go home,” he said, blaming food shortages for the rising tensions. “We Equatorians don’t want to be in here, begging. We want to be out there, farming.”

Like many other new arrivals, Mr. Longa and his children had not yet been given a tent and were sheltering in a school in the center of the largest displacement site. He said he feared for his safety when, shortly after he arrived, an Equatorian was blamed for a killing just outside the camp, spurring a brief protest outside the school.

William Tejok Toch, a community leader in the camp, acknowledged that the schoolyard had briefly been targeted, requiring intervention from United Nations police officers. “In the camps, we have our criminals,” he said. “But we manage the situation.”

Some who fled the clashes last month crowded into schools and churches in Juba, saying they did not want to risk the journey to the United Nations camps.

Others said they had made the dangerous trek, but were turned away. “If you give shelter, you should give it to everyone,” said Azen Aziuphia, 41, who said that he, his wife and his son had been denied entry.

He accused the peacekeepers of refusing to admit Equatorians like him, though the United Nations says it does not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity.

The United Nations humanitarian chief, Stephen O’Brien, acknowledged that the sites had limited space, and that the registration of newcomers had been slow. He added that the camps were meant to accommodate only those with nowhere else to go.

The camps were caught in the crossfire during the clashes last month, and at least 16 people died. Some families have buried loved ones on the edges of the camp, just beyond a coil of barbed wire. Now, the refuge is hemmed in on two sides by rows of shallow graves topped with makeshift crosses.

Gatleak Jal, 32, who fled to the camp in 2013, suspects that Mr. Kiir’s troops deliberately targeted the United Nations sites. When gunshots were fired just beyond the walls three weeks ago, he was shot three times in the arm as he ran toward his tent, and then two times more — once in the abdomen, once in the leg — after he ducked into a trench for shelter.

In a crowded medical center inside the camp, he lifted his shirt to reveal a patchwork of bloody bandages. “They didn’t put any medicine on this, because they ran out,” he said. “They’re only washing it with water.”

Mr. Longa, the new arrival, grew wistful thinking about the three brothers he had lost in three separate conflicts. One died in the war for independence against Sudan, another in the civil war two years ago, and one more in clashes last month, he said.

All three were members of the army, he added. But now he wonders what they were fighting for.

“We used to go to war for land, or for freedom,” he said. “But now they are confusing us, and making it about tribe.”