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South Sudan: Violence strikes weary population again

Published on Tuesday 12 July 2016

Affected by a catastrophic civil war since December 2013, South Sudan is falling into a new downward spiral of violence that has broken out in the capital city Juba since last week and that shows no signs of abating.

 

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Paris, 11 July 2016

The civil population, stuck in a noose of internal political rivalry, is once more the victim of violence, looting, assassinations, with many displaced. In Juba, fighting has resumed since 8 July between the two rival sides and the body count has reached the hundreds, with thousands more having to flee. The camps run by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the Protection of Civilians sites that house some 28,000 people were not spared and are actually being targeted by heavy shelling on 10 July.

In December 2013, two and a half years after declaring independence, a first outbreak of violence led to a civil war that lasted 30 months, claimed thousands of lives and uprooted 1.4 million people by September 2014. The peace agreement signed in August 2015 in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and the new national unity government did not manage to bring back stability. On the fifth anniversary of its independence, in a context of violence and bloody fighting, the spectre of a civil war is looming again.

Confronted with the altercations that resumed on 8 July 2016 and that jeopardise our humanitarian teams’ interventions, Solidarités International is calling upon the present stakeholders and the international community to put an end to the fighting, to ensure human lives and humanitarian access are respected.

About SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL

Emergency assistance to victims of conflicts, natural disasters and epidemics, extended through support to early recovery, has been Solidarités International’s driving force for more than 35 years. Access to water, sanitation and hygiene is at the heart of the expertise of our teams and their interventions on the ground. Currently present in some 20 countries, our staff provide vital humanitarian aid to more than 5 million people, with no other consideration than their needs, the respect of their dignity, with no judgment or bias, which are the founding principles of humanitarian action.

Press Contact:
Paul Duke
pduke@solidarites.org
+33 1 76 21 87 21 – +33 7 60 32 47 04