The rainy season will make it impossible to get aid by road to tens of thousands of people, yet insecurity endangers aid workers trying to reach them before it's too late
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Some of the more than 20,000 displaced people in South Sudan's Northern Bahr el Ghazal state have been reduced to eating leaves because they have very little access to aid, and their situation could worsen as the rainy season gets under way, an international medical aid group has warned.
Médecins Sans Frontières, the only humanitarian organisation with a presence on the ground, said the northwest region's remoteness will make it almost impossible to move supplies by road once the rains get heavier.
"These areas will be practically inaccessible, so the population will be completely isolated if pre-positioning of food and non-food (aid) items is not done right now," MSF's head of mission in South Sudan, Federica Nogarotto, told Thomson Reuters Foundation from Juba.
She called for aid agencies to distribute food urgently and bring in stocks for the coming months. If additional relief does not arrive, cases of malnutrition and malaria are likely to increase, she added.
Nogarotto said Northern Bahr el Ghazal state has been "neglected" because the number of people in need in other parts of the two-year-old country are greater.
Another complicating factor is the undefined status of the displaced population in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, as they have fled violence along the Kiir/Bahr al Arab river in the disputed border area between Sudan and South Sudan. Without being recognised as refugees, internally displaced or returnees, the responsibility for helping them remains unclear.
“Humanitarian agencies have struggled to understand what assistance to provide because it is difficult to determine the status of these people,” said Shaun Lummis, MSF's field coordinator in the state. But this is not an issue for MSF, he and Nogarotto emphasised.
MSF has set up mobile clinics and is training community-based healthcare workers to help detect and prevent diarrhoea, malaria and malnutrition - the three main causes of death. MSF is also running a basic clinic near the town of Pamat, focused on children under five and pregnant women.
The displaced, who have almost doubled the region’s population over the past year, are living mainly in 11 makeshift camps scattered across isolated parts of the state, though some have been taken in by host communities. Many have had to move several times.
Nogarotto said that, as a result, some have no access even to boreholes for water or plastic sheeting for shelter. Food is scarce.
"A part of these people are eating only tree leaves - they don't have land to plant anything to provide themselves with food, and they are not entitled to regular food distributions like a refugee or internally displaced person," she said.
NO PROTECTION
Aid agencies are also running up against major barriers to helping uprooted people in other parts of the world's newest country. On the second anniversary of South Sudan's independence this week, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator there welcomed confirmation from the government and armed forces that humanitarian personnel could operate freely throughout the country.
But in many areas, insecurity caused by clashes between different tribes, rebels and the army is making it extremely difficult for aid workers to do their job.
On Thursday, advocacy group Refugees International (RI) called on the United States and the United Nations to compel South Sudan to rein in soldiers who are committing atrocities in Jonglei state, where more than 100,000 people are thought to have been forced from their homes in recent months. It also called on Washington to withhold some of its foreign aid to South Sudan until Juba acts to stop abuses.
A day earlier the United States, South Sudan's biggest ally, said it was "deeply disappointed" that the army had failed to protect civilians in Jonglei.
During an offensive launched by the South Sudanese army (SPLA) against rebel forces in February, soldiers killed civilians in Pibor county, as well as looting and burning their properties and aid agency compounds, RI said in a report.
"Tens of thousands of civilians have fled into the bush, too afraid of the SPLA to return. Yet the government has stopped aid agencies from reaching them,” said Caelin Briggs, the report’s author.
No one knows how many people have been killed or wounded, Briggs said, adding that one teenage girl waited in the bush for a week after stepping on a mine because she feared going into the SPLA-held town of Pibor for treatment.
MSF also said it has been unable to reach those hiding out in the bush in Jonglei due to insecurity, and needs government support to do so.
Earlier this week, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said that the scale and seriousness of South Sudan's internal displacement situation is often under-reported. It called for better monitoring of displacement and a comprehensive analysis of the many reasons why people are forced to flee.
This would help craft "durable solutions" to the problem, including efforts to avert violence between communities competing for resources and to help prepare them better for natural hazards like flooding, the IDMC said in a country report.
"South Sudan is a country that is going in the direction of development but still has big, big, big humanitarian needs," MSF's Nogarotto said, adding that a greater focus on prevention would help reduce those aid needs.
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