www.solidarites.org

South Sudan: divide and rule

Published on Tuesday 3 May 2016

For over two years, South Sudan has been facing a civil war. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), one fifth of the population – about 2 million people – is displaced. While the President Salva Kiir has divided the country in 28 States, creating new intercommunity tensions, access to basic services is becoming increasingly difficult for one of the poorest populations in the world.

 

Photographs by Thomas Gruel for SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL

SOUTH SUDAN child black and white

Upper Nile State, where SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL has been taking action for years, does not exist anymore. As part of an administrative reform which is taking effect in South Sudan, it has been divided into three states. Located in the east of the state, the new Eastern Nile state, which concentrates the oil resources of the old Upper Nile state, is mainly populated by members of the Dinka. In the West, the Shilluk have settled on the shore of the White Nile, a much poorer part of the state.

Wau Shilluk, a withdrawn city

On the other side, the successive displacement restrictions on the river have led the city of Wau Shilluk to shut itself off for the past two years. “Previously a large village of 5,000 inhabitants, Wau Shilluk became a city of 60,000 people in 2014. According to the restrictions and the conflict’s evolution, its population now fluctuates between 20,000 and 40,000 souls, placing it at the forefront of the country’s news,” decodes Tim Young, South Sudan humanitarian access advisor for SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL.

SOUTH SUDAN child black and white

SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL teams have been taking action in Wau Shilluk since the beginning of 2014 and providing access to drinking water for its population. In February 2016, despite the conclusion of a peace agreement, the renewed conflicts between Shilluk and Dinka have limited the access to these zones.

80 % of the camp population has had to move again

Tensions between different groups are representative of the current instability of the country. “Since the beginning of the civil war, thousands of people found refuge within camps managed by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), reminds Tim Young. Yet, the Malakal camp was attacked on the 17th and 18th of February. Their living areas having been burned, 30,000 Nuers and Shilluks have had to move while at the same time staying within the camp under civilian protection mandate. Additionally, 5,000 Dinka have now taken refuge in Malakal city’s ruins. The old base of SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL is now a huge squat of displaced people.”

SOUTH SUDAN child black and white

Back in areas of the camp which are not adapted to a massive influx of populations, the camps’ inhabitants have had to face the lack of services again. SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL’s teams have worked to reconstruct a hundred new latrines in the UNMISS camp to answer the sanitation needs of these vulnerable people.

To ensure the minimum standards in a situation where many people have little access to toilets, SOLIDARITÉS INTERNATIONAL has added the distribution of disposable toilet-bags to these constructions, but it is urgent to construct new latrines, which require time and financing.

Help our teams build latrines and distribute toilet bags

DONATE

  • 12.44 million inhabitants
  • 191th out of 191 countries on the Human Development Index
  • 388.560 people helped