Representatives from Denmark, France, Greece, Guyana, the Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and Panama spoke to media ahead of the UN Security Council debate on Sudan. Credit: Jennifer Xin-Tsu Lin Levine/IPS

By Jennifer Xin-Tsu Lin Levine
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 18 2025 (IPS)

The UN Security Council convened today (August 18) to discuss South Sudan and the “interlinked challenges of climate change and conflict” affecting the region.

Security Council members who have joined the Joint Pledges on Climate, Peace and Security – Denmark, France, Greece, Guyana, the Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and Panama – spoke at a media stakeout ahead of what the representative from Panama called a “compounding crisis” in South Sudan.

The representative for Panama noted the “interlinked challenges of climate change and conflict affecting South Sudan,” referring to climate crises causing flood, drought, minimal resources and famine, further straining peace and fostering inter-communal violence.

He highlighted worsening gender-based violence specifically, saying, “Women and girls are disproportionately and systematically affected by the intersection of climate shocks and insecurity… the breakdown of community support systems heightens the risk of gender-based violence, early marriage, abduction and exploitation, yet women and girls remain key actors in community resilience and peace-building.”

In the Security Council meeting, many other representatives echoed this concern for aid provisions. The Assistant Secretary-General for Africa, Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, warned Security Council members of the risks caused by lack of funding, saying, “funding cuts are leaving millions without life-saving assistance.”

According to the latest UNICEF South Sudan Humanitarian Situation Report, the Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan is only 28.5 percent funded over halfway through the year. Between April and July, approximately 7.7 million people faced high levels of acute food insecurity, including 83,000 at risk of catastrophic conditions. Approximately 9.3 million people are in dire need of various humanitarian assistance.

The primary conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the country’s official military, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, has fueled this humanitarian crisis.

Since clashes erupted in April 2023, the fighting has displaced millions internally and across borders – contributing to famine, widespread violence and food insecurity.

The conflict heightened further in March of 2025 when First Vice President Riek Machar was arrested on charges of stirring up rebellion. His arrest effectively ended the 2018 peace agreement which had ended the civil war and established a government – since then, political legitimacy across the country has grown steadily weaker. Many see the upcoming December elections as a chance to reinstate democracy and fair, representative governance.

Murithi Mutiga, Program Director for Africa at the International Crisis Group, said, “The immediate priority should be to prevent any escalation of violence.”

He encouraged UN member states with close ties to South Sudan like Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa and Tanzania to “call for opposing military actions to create an opportunity for dialogue between the government and opposition groups” and other Security Council members to amplify these discussions without overtaking them.

The representative from Somalia, speaking on behalf of the A3+, a group of African and Caribbean nations, echoed this statement. He said, “an African-led approach, grounded in partnership, inclusivity and respect for South Sudan’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity offers the most sustainable path to peace.”

The Pobee further emphasized the necessity of all stakeholders collaborating and acting in good faith to promote democracy in the upcoming elections in December.

She warned, “Failing this, the risk of a relapse into widespread violence will only grow against the background of an already unstable region. It is therefore our shared responsibility to work in close coordination and synergy to help the South Sudanese parties to avoid such an outcome. The people of South Sudan are counting on us.”

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In Somalia, water infrastructure projects are building climate resilience and reducing emissions by using solar panels to provide energy. A new report calls for recognizing and establishing a nexus between the water, energy and food sectors in the Horn of Africa. Credit: UNDP/Tobin Jones

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 13 2024 (IPS)

The Horn of Africa holds the resources and potential for lasting development and resilience. The countries in the subregion and development partners need to come together to invest in regional cooperation and resource management.

On December 12, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the first-ever Human Development Report on the Horn of Africa subregion, which includes Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.

Horn of Africa Human Development Report 2024: Enhancing Prospects for Human Development through regional Integration, explores the key challenges that the eight countries and the subregion are experiencing in

In the Arab states and the African region, low productivity in economic activity will only continue in a “vicious cycle,” one that perpetuates poverty for the population. Abdallah Al Dardari, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for the Arab States, remarked that the countries in the subregion have been taking what he described as a “siloed approach” to state affairs, even as its neighbors are dealing with the same issues. This is evident in how the region engages with the water and food sectors.

The report calls for recognizing and establishing a nexus between the water, energy and food sectors. Over 50 percent of the population across the Horn of Africa experience moderate to severe food insecurity and only 56 percent have access to electricity. Less than 56 percent have access to clean drinking water, yet the report indicates that this is not a consistent experience among the countries, given their geographical locations.

Conflict and disasters have also been persistent factors that have limited development in the Horn of Africa, as over 23.4 million people have been displaced in the wake of major conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, and internal conflicts like in Ethiopia.

The report presents three priorities that will help to accelerate human development and build resilience: build on increasing intra-regional trade, enhance collaboration in the water, energy and food sectors, and promote governance and peace.

The region could see a GDP increase of 3.9 percent by 2030 through liberalizing trade and reducing tariffs. The African Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) agreement would also boost trade were it fully implemented; the countries in the ACFTA need to ratify the agreement for them to benefit. Regional integration through collaboration on resource management can help foster sustainable growth and climate resilience, as the report suggests. This could be seen in improved access to electricity and shared food value systems. This could be valuable in a subregion that holds a high share of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydro and yet faces significant energy gaps.

“What we’ve attempted to do with this report is see if we can begin to see a shift in the narrative on this region,” said Ahunna Eziakonwa, the UN Assistant Secretary General and Director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa. In working towards integration in economic and political relations, she argued, partnerships need to be established within the subregion that is built on finding commonalities and shared purposes. Changing the narrative is key towards achieving sustainable development.

At the report’s launch, Eziakonwa remarked that certain demographics needed to be brought into the fold when discussing development, requiring a re-examination of the narratives associated with them. Young people make up a significant percentage of the population across the region, yet they have been characterized as the problem rather than the solution. Involving young people and recognizing the skills and perspectives they can bring to the table is critical, which will involve expanding socio-economic opportunities for the youth population that are not employed or in education. Investing in women’s participation in the development sector is also needed, for they have been largely left out of decision-making spaces and policy discussions.

Through this report, UNDP is calling on governments and development partners to invest in infrastructure and policy frameworks that build up human development and resilience in the Horn of Africa.

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These Sudanese refugee children are among the 748,000 refugees and asylum-seekers who have sought refuge in Egypt. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
CAIRO & NAIROBI, Aug 26 2024 (IPS)

As peace eludes war-torn Sudan, thousands of displaced people fleeing the deadly battle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have found refuge in neighboring countries, including Egypt.

The Sudanese refugee population in Egypt has grown almost sevenfold in what is considered the worst displacement crisis in the world, impacting 10 million people, with at least 2 million having fled to neighboring countries, including Egypt. In Egypt, over 748,000 refugees and asylum-seekers are registered with the UNHCR, a majority of whom are women and children who have recently arrived from Sudan. This number is expected to continue to rise.

“When Sudan plunged into conflict, the international aid community, UN agencies, civil society and governments developed a response plan to meet the urgent needs of refugees fleeing Sudan to seek safety in five different countries, including Chad, Ethiopia, Egypt, South Sudan and the Central African Republic,” Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises within the United Nations, told IPS.

To put it into perspective, the 2024 Sudan Regional Refugee Response Plan calls for USD 109 million to respond to refugee education needs across the region. To date, only 20 percent of this amount has been mobilized, including USD 4.3 million—or 40 percent of the requirement for Egypt.

ECW was among the first to respond in the education sector, providing emergency grants to support partners in all five countries.

The government of Egypt has demonstrated great commitment to providing refugees with access to education services, but with 9,000 children arriving every month, the needs are overwhelming.

Consequently, nearly 54 percent of newly arrived children are currently out of school, per the most recent assessment.

Sherif says despite Egypt’s generous refugee policy, the needs are great, resources are running thin and additional funding is urgently needed to scale up access to safe, inclusive, and equitable quality education for refugee as well as vulnerable host community children.

“Families fleeing the brutal conflict in Sudan endured the most unspeakable violence and had their lives ripped apart. For girls and boys uprooted by the internal armed conflict, education is nothing less than a lifeline. It provides protection and a sense of normalcy amidst the chaos and gives them the resources they need to heal and thrive again,” she said.

Yasmine Sherif, Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), interacts with the Sudanese refugee community in Egypt. Credit: ECW

The government of Egypt has demonstrated great commitment to providing refugees with access to education services, but with 9,000 children arriving every month, the needs are overwhelming.

On a high-level stock-taking UN mission to Egypt in August 2024, ECW, UNHCR and UNICEF are urging donors, governments and individuals of good will to contribute to filling the remaining gap and scaling up the education response for refugee and host-community children.

“We have seen the important work that is being undertaken by UNHCR, the Catholic Relief Service and local organizations. But needs are fast outpacing the response, and Egypt now has a growing funding gap of USD 6.6 million. Classrooms are hosting as many as 60 children, most of whom are from host communities,” Sherif says.

Stressing that additional resources are urgently and desperately required to ensure that refugee and host community children in Egypt and other refugee-receiving countries in the region can attend school and continue learning. With the future of the entire region at stake, ECW’s call to action is for as many donors as possible to step in and help deliver the USD10 million required here and now to adequately support the refugee and host communities.

Education Cannot Wait Executive Director Yasmine Sherif, UNHCR, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) staff and Sudanese refugee girls and women at the CRS office in Cairo, Egypt.Credit: ECW

“We have seen the important work that is being undertaken by UNHCR, the Catholic Relief Service and local organizations, such as the Om Habibeh Foundation. But needs are fast outpacing the response,” Sherif says.

“In the spirit of responsibility sharing enshrined in the Global Compact on Refugees, I call on international donors to urgently step up their support. Available funding has come from ECW, ECHO, the EU, Vodafone, and a few other private sector partners. We should not abandon children in their darkest hour. This is a plea to the public and private sectors, and governments to step in and deliver for conflict-affected children,” she said.

Dr. Hanan Hamdan, UNHCR Representative to the Government of Egypt and to the League of Arab States, agreed.

“Forcibly displaced children should not be denied their fundamental right to pursue their education; their flight from conflict can no longer be an impediment to their rights. UNHCR, together with ECW and UNICEF, continue to ensure that children’s education, and therefore their future, are safeguarded,” she said.

“To this end, it is crucial to further support Egypt as a host country. It has shown remarkable resilience and generosity, but the increasing number of displaced individuals requires enhanced international assistance. By strengthening Egypt’s capacity to support refugees, we can ensure that more children have access to education and eventually a brighter future,” Hamdan added.

During the high-level ECW mission in Egypt, the ECW delegation met with key strategic partners—including donors, UN agencies, and local and international NGOs—and with Sudanese refugees to take stock of the scope of needs and the ongoing education response by aid partners.

Jeremy Hopkins, UNICEF Representative in Egypt, reiterated the agency’s commitment.

“UNICEF is steadfast in its commitment to ensure that conflict-affected Sudanese children have the opportunity to resume their education. In Egypt, through innovative learning spaces and the Comprehensive Inclusion Programme, UNICEF is working diligently, under the leadership of the Egyptian government, in cooperation with sister UN agencies and development partners, to create inclusive learning environments and strengthen resilient education systems and services,” Hopkins said.

“This not only benefits displaced Sudanese children but also supports host communities by ensuring that all children have access to quality education.”

In December 2023, ECW announced a USD 2 million First Emergency Response Grant in Egypt. The 12-month grant, implemented by UNHCR in partnership with UNICEF, is reaching over 20,000 Sudanese refugees in the Aswan, Cairo, Giza and Alexandria governorates.

Sudanese displaced children in Egypt are falling behind in their education. Education Cannot Wait has made a global appeal for funds to ensure they are able to continue with their education. Credit: ECW

The grant supports interventions such as non-formal education, cash grants, social cohesion with host communities, mental health and psychosocial support, and construction and refurbishment work in public schools hosting refugee children to benefit both refugee and host community children. As conflict escalates across the globe, ECW is committed to ensuring that all children have a chance at lifelong learning and earning opportunities.

Beyond Egypt, ECW has allocated USD 8 million in First Emergency Response grants in the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan to address the urgent protection and education needs of children fleeing the armed conflict in Sudan. In Sudan, ECW has invested USD 28.7 million in multi-year and emergency grants, which have already reached more than 100,000 crisis-affected girls and boys.

During the mission, ECW called on leaders to increase funding for the regional refugee response and other forgotten crises worldwide. ECW urgently appeals to public and private donors to mobilize an additional US$600 million to reach 20 million crisis-impacted girls and boys with safe, quality education by the end of its 2023–2026 strategic plan.

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Paleki Ayang, Gender Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa, Equality Now

By Paleki Ayang
JUBA, Feb 27 2024 (IPS)

Female genital mutilation (FGM) stands as one of the most egregious violations of human rights, particularly affecting women and girls worldwide. However, when conflict and forced displacement enter the equation, the horrors of FGM are exacerbated, creating a dire situation that demands urgent attention and action. Where instability and insecurity prevail, the prevalence of FGM often intensifies, exacerbated by factors such as displacement, poverty, and the breakdown of social systems.

On April 15, 2023, war erupted in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), plunging the country into an intense political and humanitarian crisis with unprecedented emerging needs. As of December 2023, over 7.4 million people were uprooted from their homes by the 9-month conflict, of which about half a million fled to neighboring Egypt, a country that also has similarly high records of FGM cases.

Equality Now and the Tadwein Center for Gender Studies are currently commissioning a study in Egypt among select Sudanese families in Cairo and Giza to understand the particularities of cross-border FGM, to analyze the attitude of Sudanese families in Egypt towards FGM and to assess possible changes in the practice, such as the type of cutting, and the age of girls when they are cut.

Nexus between conflict, displacement, and FGM

Although Sudan legally banned the practice of FGM in 2020, women and girls continue to face heightened risks of violence, exploitation, and abuse, including FGM. Ongoing conflict has led to the breakdown of the rule of law and governance structures in Khartoum and a few other states.

Declaring a state of emergency permits the government to prioritize security and stability over individual rights and the rule of law. In some locations with relative stability, there is selective enforcement of laws driven by social polarization, exacerbating discriminatory practices and inequalities.

Additionally, in the chaos of displacement, traditional practices may persist, perpetuating the cycle of FGM and denying women and girls agency over their bodies and futures.

The nexus between conflict, displacement, and FGM underscores the urgent need for holistic, multi-sectoral approaches that address the root causes of the practice and provide comprehensive support to affected populations.

However, it is critical to redefine how the multi-sectoral approach could roll out within the context of conflict, specifically where legal protections for women and girls are minimal or non-existent.

The usual activities undertaken by activists and civil society organizations—such as advocacy campaigns, community outreach programs, and legal reforms—may be hampered by the chaotic and unpredictable nature of conflict environments, making it challenging to mobilize support and raise awareness about the harms of FGM.

Strengthening responses to FGM during conflict and displacement

Conversations about new and innovative ways where legal frameworks and policy measures need to be strengthened to prohibit FGM must happen, and perpetrators must be held accountable for their actions, even amid conflict and displacement.

A report on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Humanitarian Settings in the Arab Region, published by UNFPA in 2021, discusses the challenges and barriers to addressing FGM in such contexts and offers recommendations for stakeholders involved in humanitarian response and protection efforts.

This is critical, as the prevention and response to FGM are not prioritized in humanitarian settings due to lack of funding and political will. The report underscores the importance of culturally sensitive approaches, community engagement, capacity building, and partnerships to combat FGM and support survivors in humanitarian settings effectively.

Medicalization of FGM requires urgent attention. Prior to the start of the current conflict, Sudan had the highest rate of medicalized FGM globally, accounting for 67% of cases in the country.

The collapse of healthcare systems and infrastructure brought about a different reality that necessitated changing health priorities. It could be argued that the medicalization of FGM diverts already strained resources, attention, and expertise in-country away from essential healthcare services, especially sexual and reproductive health services, including responding to conflict-related sexual violence and maternal and child health.

Women’s rights groups in Khartoum and other towns have established Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) and other community-driven mutual aid efforts that could be used to mainstream FGM-related interventions as they respond to emerging humanitarian needs. Additionally, efforts to integrate FGM prevention and response into broader humanitarian assistance programs are essential in reaching displaced populations with life-saving interventions and support.

Engaging communities, religious leaders, and key stakeholders in the ‘new social structures’ shaped by conflict and displacement can foster much-needed dialogue, dispel myths, and promote alternative rites of passage that celebrate womanhood without resorting to harmful practices.

Despite having different priorities as displaced women and girls—such as humanitarian, livelihood, and other urgent needs— empowering them with knowledge and agency is essential in enabling them to assert their rights and resist pressures to undergo FGM.

Addressing FGM amongst Sudan’s displaced communities

Community-led initiatives to end FGM among Sudanese communities displaced from Khartoum into neighboring states or neighboring countries must take into consideration the diverse ethnic groups in Sudan—each with their distinct cultural traditions and practices relating to FGM, with some communities practicing different types of FGM. This requires an in-depth understanding of the sociocultural factors that drive it.

Although wealthier households in Sudan and people in urban areas were previously less likely to support FGM’s continuation, conflict highlights the intersectional impacts on different groups of women and girls, and forced displacement could result in the practice being carried to host countries that may lack effective legal frameworks or enforcement mechanisms to address cross-border FGM.

Considering anti-FGM interventions transcend geographical boundaries and ethnicities, they must be carefully tailored to community needs. Cross-border FGM could also be driven by a sense of struggling to maintain a cultural identity and uphold perceived social status in a new society.

Reaffirming commitments to end FGM

At the international level, concerted action is needed to address the intersecting challenges of FGM, conflict, and forced displacement. The United Nations and other multilateral organizations must prioritize the issue on the global agenda, mobilizing resources and political will to further research, support affected populations, and strengthen efforts to eradicate FGM in conflict-affected areas.

Moreover, partnerships between governments, civil society organizations, and grassroots activists remain essential in driving a collective response that transcends borders and builds solidarity among diverse stakeholders.

As Sudanese women bear the brunt of violence and displacement, women-led organizations are instrumental in fostering resilience and actively rebuilding their communities. Supporting and financing these organizations should be prioritized, as it is not only a matter of promoting rights but also a pathway to peace and stability.

As we confront the grim reality of FGM amidst conflict and forced displacement, we must reaffirm our commitment to the fundamental rights and dignity of every woman and girl. We cannot stand idly by as generations continue to suffer the devastating consequences of this harmful practice.

Now is the time for bold and decisive action guided by principles of justice, equality, and compassion. Together, we can break the chains of FGM, offering hope and healing to those who have endured untold suffering and paving the way for a future free from violence and discrimination for all.

Note: Paleki Ayang is Equality Now’s Gender Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa

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Children celebrate during a ECW high-level mission to South Sudan. Credit: ECW

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 2023 (IPS)

In times of crisis, education is an essential component of humanitarian intervention packages, South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction Awut Deng Acuil told IPS in an exclusive interview.

She was speaking to IPS during the UN’s ECOSOC High-Level Political Forum, during which she participated in the side event, “Ensuring Education Continuity: The Roles of Education in Emergencies, Protracted Crises and Building Peace.”

Years of conflict in South Sudan and the region, combined with recurring disasters, massive population displacement and the impact of COVID-19, have adversely impacted the Government’s efforts in delivering quality education to all. Yet, their interest and commitment to invest in inclusive education remains.

“Every time there is a crisis, there is a rush for humanitarian assistance as a life-saving intervention. But I think education (should be part) of this as well. When people run away from conflict or natural disasters, they are mostly women and children,” Acuil said.

“These children arrive exhausted and traumatized, and what is crucial is that the (humanitarian) intervention is integrated. We must also work at the same time to create a safe environment where these children can continue to go to school. This helps them psychologically to be engaged in learning (rather) than thinking of what they have gone through,” she continued.

“Education is lifesaving. They will play, they will get lessons, they will get counseling from those teachers who are well-trained in [trauma] counseling… All these interventions provide them with a crucial sense of normalcy.”

Interestingly, she said, the first thing children in crisis ask is: “Can we go to school?”

According to UNHCR, close to 200,000 people – a majority of whom are children and women – have crossed to South Sudan in recent weeks to flee the conflict in Sudan. International humanitarian partners work with the Government to ensure the new arrivals receive health, nutrition, and schooling.

South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction Awut Deng Acuil.

“South Sudan has an open-door policy. As soon as they are settled, children have to go to school. [We are] building temporary shelters for them to go to school. Supporting teachers, who will be helping these children, is key.”

Acuil said Education Cannot Wait has been at the forefront of assisting with setting up quality, holistic education opportunities for incoming children. She also stressed the importance of integrating refugees into the national system, citing South Sudan’s inclusion policy as a best practice in the region.

“We have refugee teachers who are head teachers in our public schools. We have refugees in our boarding schools and public schools in South Sudan.”

ECW recently extended its Multi-Year Resilience Programme in the country with a new US$40 million catalytic grant. GPE provided an additional US$10 million for the programme.

The three-year programme will be delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Finn Church Aid, in close coordination with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and others partners. The investment will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth – including refugees, returnees and host-community children – with holistic education supports that improve access to school, ensure quality learning, enhance inclusivity for girls and children with disabilities, and build resilience to future shocks.

Total ECW funding in South Sudan now tops US$72 million. ECW is calling on five donors to step up with US$5 million each to provide an additional US$25 million in funding to the education in emergencies response in South Sudan.

The needs are pressing for the world’s youngest nation.  South Sudan continues to receive refugees fleeing the conflict in Sudan and requires additional support to address the converging challenges of conflict, climate change, forced displacement and other protracted crises.

“The multi-year programme that was launched last month will help a lot in terms of access, infrastructure, and teacher training. We have ‘hard-to-reach areas’ that have never seen a school, never seen a classroom. These are the places we have prioritized and targeted with this $40 million grant. Along with girls’ education, and children with disabilities, and also materials for education, especially printing more books.”

Acuil highlighted the importance of girls’ education, in a context where cultural norms and practices, including child marriage, hinder their access to school. She said the country is tackling the issue through a vast campaign championed by the President that targets traditional leaders, civil society, members of parliament, executives, educators, teachers and students themselves.

“Our President has taken the lead in campaigning for girls’ education. This year he declared free and compulsory education for all to ensure South Sudan makes up for the two lost generations due to conflict in the country. He is encouraging us to [open] boarding schools for girls, especially. In primary school, the disparity is so close, and in some states, we have more girls than boys. But when they transition to the secondary level, only 18% complete their 12-years education.”

Acuil called on UN Member States to support education in emergencies and invest more resources.

“Education Cannot Wait has shown and demonstrated that when there are crises, they have a prompt response to help children. Whether during disasters or man-made wars, ECW has been able to do that. We need to focus on that, prioritizing education and also investing in education.”

“If you invest in children today, they will be the leaders of tomorrow. We must help facilitate their education and empower them to help their countries and communities. That is why humanitarian assistance and education should go hand-in-hand.”

“I would like to end this with something I heard from a local girl who said: ‘Education cannot wait, but marriage can wait.’ Our humanity’s strength lies in education, and we must continue to remind those who keep forgetting, and ensure to awaken those who have not yet woken up to be part and parcel of education.”

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ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif launches the Multi-Year Resilience Programme in Yirol, South Sudan. The three-year programme, delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Finn Church Aid, in close conjunction with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and other partners, will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth. Credit: ECW/Jiménez

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jun 24 2023 (IPS)

South Sudan is experiencing one of the most severe crises in the world today, causing fragility, instability, and economic stagnation. While a peace agreement was reached in 2018, sporadic intercommunal violence and climate-induced disasters continue to spur displacement. More than 2.2 million people are internally displaced. Another 2.3 million have fled to neighboring countries as refugees.

“South Sudan ranks the lowest on the human development index. It is the poorest country in the world and will need to catch up across all sustainable development goals and especially in areas such as eliminating extreme poverty, improving the education system, and gender equality. Yet, before COVID-19, 2.8 million children, and adolescents, or 70 percent of school-aged children, were not attending school. The number is now closer to 3 million,” ECW’s Executive Director Yasmine Sherif told IPS.

Sherif was on a field mission to South Sudan, where she met the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and Awut Deng Acuil, South Sudan’s Minister of General Education and Instruction, to assist immediate solutions to the education crisis in a country where only 13 percent of children transition to secondary school. For them, education and conflict are two sides of the same coin. Their joint mission is to ensure no child is left behind, especially in hard-to-reach areas such as Pibor and Abyei.

“Years of conflict and forced displacement, compounded by climate-induced disasters, have taken a heavy toll on South Sudan’s next generation. Now is the time to turn the tide and provide the most vulnerable girls and boys with the protection and hope that only a quality education offers. By working together with the Government, donors, civil society, and across the United Nations, this is the single best investment we can make for the future of this young country and the entire region,” said Sherif when she met with Ministry officials in Lakes State.

At least 135,000 children will benefit from the ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme in South Sudan. Credit: ECW/Jiménez

ECW is the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises and has supported South Sudan with multi-year investment since 2020. To address these interconnected crises through the transformative power of education, President Kiir and Sherif announced USD 40 million in catalytic grant funding in a function attended by key stakeholders, including the governor of Lakes State, education officials, parents, and children.

From the Lakes State, the fund has launched its second and the largest ever multi-year investment amounting to USD 75 million and has secured two-thirds of that amount, which is USD 50 million. Of this, ECW contributed USD 40 million. The Global Partnership for Education provided another USD 10 million for Education. In addition to the new multi-year investment, ECW also announced a half-a-million dollar First Emergency Response grant to support the immediate education response to the arrivals of refugees and returnees fleeing Sudan.

“We appeal to government donors and the private sector to close the remaining gap of one-third, equivalent to USD 25 million, to fully fund a multi-year investment education program. We say five for five to fully fund the multi-year investment. If five strategic donor partners and private sector (partners) offered five million dollars each, we would have a fully funded multi-year resilience program in the education sector,” she says.

ECW funding in South Sudan now tops USD 72 million, up from the fund’s USD 32 million invested to date – reaching close to 140,000 children, built or rehabilitated over 160 classrooms and temporary learning spaces, and provided learning materials to 50,000 children thus far.

With the extended response multi-year response, children will continue to enjoy a quality, safe, inclusive education. Sherif says there is a special focus on children with disability, especially those with cognitive disabilities, an invisible problem that often goes unrecognized among children in developing countries.

Further stressing that the President and education ministries are fully committed to bringing girls back to school through progressive messaging to the community, policy, and law. The push to keep girls in school and out of reach of child marriages and early child pregnancies is unrelenting.

“The Government of South Sudan is fully committed to ensuring that all children are able to obtain a quality education. Education Cannot Wait’s top-up investment will provide life-saving educational opportunities for tens of thousands of crisis-affected girls and boys across the country,” said President Salva Kiir Mayardit.

“To advance this work, we are calling on world leaders to step up funding for ECW and its in-country partners. This is a critical investment in sustainable development, peace, and prosperity for the people of South Sudan and crisis-impacted children worldwide.”

Closer home, the current conflict in Sudan is fuelling additional needs in South Sudan. More than 100,000 people have crossed the border in recent weeks. Cornered by unrelenting multiple challenges, options for a better future shrink with every new challenge. Unmitigated, an entire generation of children could miss out on lifelong learning and earning opportunities.

“In light of the unfolding Sudan crisis, we will allocate and make an announcement of half a million dollars to support the Government of South Sudan to provide education to arrivals and returnees fleeing the Sudan conflict. Children and adolescents who were already going to school will continue to do so uninterrupted, have school meals, and psychosocial and mental health support,” Sherif said.

The new funding will extend ECW’s Multi-Year Resilience Programme in South Sudan for another three years. The three-year programme will be delivered by Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Finn Church Aid, in conjunction with the Ministry of General Education and Instruction and other partners.

It will reach at least 135,000 crisis-affected children and youth – including refugees, returnees, and host-community children – with holistic education supports that improve access to school, ensure quality learning, enhance inclusivity for girls and children with disabilities, and build resilience to future shocks.

Importantly, the new multi-year programme will improve responsiveness and resilience through improved evidence-based decision-making, strengthen coordination and meaningful engagement with local actors, and scale-up resource mobilization.

As the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, ECW collaborates closely with governments, public and private donors, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and other humanitarian and development aid actors to increase efficiencies and end siloed responses.

ECW and its strategic partners are assessing the impacts of the civil war in Sudan on neighboring countries, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, to provide agile and responsive investments that return crisis-impacted girls and boys to the safety and protection of quality learning environments. The fund urgently appeals to public and private sector donors for expanded support to reach more vulnerable children and youth.

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This year marks South Sudan's tenth independence anniversary (file photo). A new report by the International Crisis Group says that in order to ensure lasting peace the country needs wider power-sharing and decentralisation of government. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Nalisha Adams
BONN, Germany, Feb 10 2021 (IPS)

The threat of a full-blown civil war in South Sudan remains unless the country’s leaders can broaden power sharing, warns a new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) released almost year into the country’s formation of a government of national unity.

The report titled “Toward a Viable Future for South Sudan” formulates a stark conclusion. Almost a decade after its 2011 independence from Sudan, “South Sudan – the world’s newest country – needs a reset, if not a redo.”

“Our argument is that South Sudan is so fragile and faces so many challenges and is so diverse that we think the only way to govern South Sudan peacefully is through radical consensus as a form of power sharing and government,” Alan Boswell, ICG’s Senior Analyst for South Sudan and one of the authors of the report, told IPS.

The report urged South Sudanese elite, religious leaders and civil society to rethink the country’s system of governance and create a political system that would work for one of Africa’s most diverse nations with more than 60 different ethnic groups.

Upcoming elections, which could possibly be set for 2022, as well as the country’s “winner-take-all” political system which “ill suits a country that requires consensus among major blocs to avert cyclical power struggles,” could inflame tensions, said the report released today, Feb. 10.

“Incentives for post-election violence will be acute. South Sudan’s highly centralised power structure and political economy raises the election’s stakes, since there are limited consolation prizes especially if [President Salva] Kiir continues to flout the constitution by refusing to devolve oil revenues and removing powerful governors by decree,” the report said. South Sudan has the third-largest oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa, which generates the majority of the government’s wealth.

South Sudan gained independent after Africa’s longest civil war, which lasted from 1956 to 1972 and then again from 1983 to independence. But two years later, in 2013, the nation descended into civil war after  Kiir fired his cabinet and accused his vice president, Riek Machar, of being behind a plot to oust him.

Majoritarian democracy proved itself to not be a successful model for South Sudan.

“We make the argument that although South Sudan has structured itself along with many other states around the world as a majoritarian democracy, where in theory they go to polls and whoever the majority picks rules. That in practice in South Sudan’s context is likely a recipe for many groups feeling shut out of power, and a recipe for the ongoing power struggles that have already killed 100,000s of South Sudanese,” Boswell said.

In September 2018, all sides signed the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS), which included a power sharing agreement. The government of national unity was formed almost a year ago, at the end of February 2020, as part of the conditions of the agreement.

Boswell urged South Sudanese elites and the country’s external partners to support the country and “go back to the drawing board” and think “how they create the political system that works for them rather than copying political systems from other places that might not be as appropriate.”

Boswell said in order to prevent more conflict, the ICG called for pre- and post-election power sharing. “In order to prevent more conflict South Sudan really needs a very broad, inclusive power sharing before, during and after the vote. What you don’t want is a situation where the election is seen as a path by the one party to defeat another party,” Boswell said.

The report cited examples of rotational power sharing that could “encourage multi-ethnic alliances or mean losers of elections feel they have a shot at the presidency next time around,” the report stated.

For example, Nigeria — where through informal agreement the country rotates its presidency between the Muslim north and the Christian south; and Tanzania — where the presidency is rotated between a Muslim and Christian every decade.

Additional recommendations included, among others:

• Setting aside prominent positions in the national government for electoral runners-up as a way of guaranteeing them positions of influence to prevent them from taking up arms.
• Having regional leaders broker pre-election dialogue, to extract assurances from losing parties in order to lower the stakes as well as guaranteeing in advance another broad-based unity government.
• A system where power can be shared more equitably at the centre.
• Agree to designate the first vice president position, for the presidential runner-up, while allocating at least one other vice presidential position to the next most successful contestant.

More than four million South Sudanese have been displaced across the region and within their own country in one of Africa’s largest displacement crises (file photo). Credit: Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/IPS

Life for South Sudanese remains a harsh reality of food insecurity and continued conflict.

Last September, Yasmin Sooka Chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said in a statement that the implementation of key areas of the revitalised agreement had stalled. “While the COVID-19 pandemic can take some of the blame, the lack of progress poses a threat to the peace process,” she said, noting the the escalation in violence in Central Equatoria, Jonglei, Lakes, Unity, Western Bahr el-Ghazal, and Warrap States, and the Greater Pibor Administrative Area.

“A breakdown in the ceasefire with armed groups in the Equatorias has fuelled the violence and already displaced thousands of South Sudanese civilians,” she said in a statement to the Human Rights Commission.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), “more than four million South Sudanese have been displaced across the region and within their own country in one of Africa’s largest displacement crises”. Of the four million displaced, UNHCR notes that there are almost 2,3 million refugees and asylum seekers, with the largest number in Uganda (over 890,000), followed closely by Sudan (736,700), followed by Ethiopia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Last December, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that almost half — 5.8 million — of the country’s 11 million people were acutely food insecure. “In 2020, communities were hit hard by the triple shock of intensified conflict and sub-national violence, a second consecutive year of major flooding, and the impacts of COVID-19. Some 1.6 million people remained internally displaced and another 2.2 million as refugees in the region,” OCHA said in its 2021 Humanitarian Needs Overview for South Sudan.

Meanwhile, the ICG report also noted that development partners, fatigued by years of conflict resolution had “no clear plan for finding peace, despite the substantial sums still devoted to humanitarian aid.”

There was also widespread cynicism among donors, Boswell said. “They have lost any vision of what a peaceful South Sudan could look like and how to help get it there,” he said.

He cautioned this was not very sustainable.

“If there is not a vision or a plan that both South Sudanese and both donors can look upon and push towards where the country is heading and what a peaceful situation looks like then we fear that donors would gradually, as they have been, pull more and more out of South Sudan and start doing the bare minimum of just keeping people alive,” Boswell said.

South Sudanese have lost a lot of hope in their country, because they have lost faith in their leaders after seeing them act in ways that are clearly selfish, Boswell said.

One example of this is the large-scale corruption within the country.

According to Transparency International, in 2012 Kiir accused at least 75 government and ex-government officials of embezzling $4 billion of public funds and in a public statement urged for the money to be returned. Only $60 million was reportedly returned to a bank account in Kenya.

Last September, during her statement to the Human Rights Commission, Sooka cautioned that “lives are being destroyed by financial corruption on an epic scale” in South Sudan.

She referred to a recent report to parliament by South Sudan’s National Revenue Authority that had shown “that approximately $300 million have been “lost” in the last three months alone”.

“At one end of the spectrum, South Sudan’s political elites are fighting for control of the country’s oil and mineral resources, in the process stealing their people’s future. At the other, the soldiers in this conflict over resources are offered the chance to abduct and rape women in lieu of salaries,” Sooka had said.

Despite the challenges faced by South Sudan, the country’s diversity remains a strength.

“Europe is not necessarily weaker, in fact a lot of people argue that they are in fact stronger, because of their diversity … So our point is that South Sudanese need to look at what they are constituent-wise and the elites — if they are serious about building their country and not just looting its resources — should think about how to forge a settlement that works for its parts,” Boswell told IPS.

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Africa’s rapidly-growing cities and food markets with a turnover of up to $250 billion per year offer the largest and fastest growing market opportunity to the continent’s 60 million farms. But getting the food to market from rural areas remains a challenge. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Kenya/TORIT STATE, South Sudan, Sep 10 2020 (IPS)

In Torit State, southern South Sudan, Margaret Itto is one of the farmers in Africa’s youngest country who have invested heavily in agriculture. But she is not able to access the lucrative market for her produce in the capital Juba simply because of poor roads.

“Road infrastructure in this country is a big hindrance,” said Itto. “Getting the produce from the farms to the stores, then to the market is very challenging. Many times, my workers have had to sleep in the bush because their vehicle got stuck,” she told IPS.

Itto, who grows groundnuts, sunflower, maize, beans and sesame, among other crops, has had to endure huge post harvest losses, especially when it rains as this makes roads impassable.

Margaret Itto (right) on her groundnut farm in Torit, South Sudan. She has had to endure huge post harvest losses especially whenever it rains during the harvesting season because the inadequate roads means its difficult to get the food to market. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

In sub-Saharan Africa 40 precent of staple foods fail to reach markets because of poor roads and market access limitations, according to the Food Sustainability Index (FSI) developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (BCFN).

To this end, importers have taken advantage of the demand by supplying low quality food products to Africa’s cities. “Given our high cost of production, many urban dwellers end up consuming imported low quality food because they are far cheaper than locally produced food,” observed Dr James Nyoro, the Governor for Kiambu County in Central Kenya.

Africa’s rapidly-growing cities and food markets with a turnover of up to $250 billion per year offer the largest and fastest-growing market opportunity to the continent’s 60 million farms, according to a new report released alongside the ongoing virtual Africa Green Revolution Forum. But for African farmers to take advantage of the huge market opportunity there is a need for investment in non-urban road infrastructure, small and intermediary cities, improved urban food systems governance, and food safety regulations and enforcement, among other things.

The Africa Agriculture Status Report (AASR) — an annual findings of the state of agriculture on the continent which is authored by experts from the United Nations, various universities and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), among other institutions — highlights five key priority areas that must be taken care of.

“There will be need for improved urban food system governance, efficient urban wholesale markets, food safety regulation and enforcement, regional free trade and agricultural policy harmonisation, and agricultural research focused on high-growth, high-value food commodities,” said Prof. Rudy Rabbinge, a Professor Emeritus in Sustainable Development and Food Security at Wageningen University, and one of the lead authors of the report.

Rabbinge’s sentiments resonate with findings of an earlier report by the BCFN, that the most critical challenge are weak governance structures, insufficient or low resources and capacity, lack of professional training, and persistent conflict and lack of coherence between sectors, actors and jurisdictions.

These challenges, according to the BCFN report, are recognised in the new normative global sustainable development agendas agreed to by national governments, but they will have to be contextually relevant, locally adapted, better supported implementation efforts in food governance.

Daniele Fattibene, research scientist at the BCFN, told IPS that it is crucial to launch policies and initiatives to preserve food security in African urban areas. “COVID-19 has exposed many people in African urban areas to poverty and hunger. Most of them who were employed in casual labours lost their jobs during lockdown. While some have returned to rural areas where access to food was easier, others cannot go for this option, as they already escaped from violence or hunger,” he said.

According to Andrew Cox, the chief of staff and strategy at AGRA, a cohort of new, non-traditional actors – including city planners, mayors, district councils, trader organisations and public health professionals – are becoming key players in the implementation of agricultural policy at a time when Africa’s agri-food systems are shifting increasingly towards urban areas.

This was echoed by Fattibene, who believes that African mayors should invest in urban agriculture, as a way to shorten food chains and preserve them from sudden external shocks as a medium and long-term intervention.

“In this sense, local authorities should support smallholders producers and SMEs to form cooperatives and encourage supermarkets and other grocers to source their products locally instead of importing products,” he said, adding that they should develop tailored strategies to effectively map their food systems, taking as a reference other cities in the Global South such as Quito in Ecuador, which has developed effective urban food resilience plans.

“This may allow develop[ment] of early warning tools to avoid food emergencies in urban areas,” he told IPS.

The main road linking Magwi town to Lobone town at the border of South Sudan and Uganda. In sub-Saharan Africa 40 precent of staple food fails to reach markets because of transport infrastructure and market access limitations. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

The AASR report also gives an example of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where access to markets is the weakest in Africa, raising farm production costs and reducing the scope for profitable trade and non-farm investments.

Another challenge is to do with cross border trade policies. This was heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, when countries across the globe decided to restrict food exports due to the pandemic, thereby exacerbating food insecurity, especially in Africa’s urban areas.

Locally, restrictions at the border between Kenya and Tanzania for example saw perishable foodstuff go to waste during the height of the pandemic as truck drivers waited to clear with authorities on both sides.

However, the AASR authors are optimistic that the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) is moving forward and could mark a milestone in improved policy that allows scaling of investment in production, processing, and trade and much lower costs of operation.

As cities continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, Fattibene says that authorities should launch measures to protect those employed in informal sectors such as street food vendors in open air markets, who were seriously affected by the crisis, and as well support those children who rely on school meals as their main daily source of safe and nutritious food as an immediate short term measure.

“To implement all these measures, additional funding for local authorities will be required,” he said.

By Maged Srour
ROME, Oct 7 2019 (IPS)

Human rights movement Amnesty International has accused South Sudanese authorities for lack of independence as they have allowed allowing human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity to go unpunished.

In a report released today, Oct. 7, Amnesty noted that despite investigation committees and various reports that are compiled on the violence that resulted from the internal war that broke out in December 2013, authorities continue to “deny credible reports implicating the armed forces in serious human rights violations. When the President does respond by setting up investigation committees, they lack independence and impartiality and, with the one exception, do not result in criminal trials”.

When war broke out in 2013 in South Sudan, refugees poured into neighbouring Gambella. Today, 485,000 South Sudanese refugees lived in the Gambella region, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee organisation. Some displaced Nuer brought arms across the border, destabilising an already tense region. “The fact that the Nuer and Anuwak exist on both sides of the border makes it easy for people of both communities to pass backwards and forwards, taking with them their conflicts both between the two tribes but also at the national level,” says John Ashworth, who has been working in South Sudan and the surrounding region for the last 30 years. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
GAMBELLA, Ethiopia, May 6 2019 (IPS)

Right up against the border with South Sudan, the western Gambella region of Ethiopia has become a watchword for trouble and no-go areas as its neighbour’s troubles have spilled over. But now there may be reason for optimism on either side of the border.

The brown waters of the Baro River meandering through the Ethiopian city of Gambella—from which the surrounding region takes its name—coupled with an atmosphere of tropical languor creates an almost cliched archetype of the Western idea of an African river port. Except for the fact that there is not a single boat on the river. The 2013 outbreak of civil war in South Sudan, whose border lies 50 kilometres from the city, put an end to the thriving trade that once plied this waterway between Gambella and Juba, the South Sudanese capital. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

It is hard to visit Gambella and not be struck by the height of many locals, some with horizontal scarification lines across their foreheads. The Nuer are one of five ethnic groups populating the region. Close ties and tensions between the Nuer and Anuwak, the two largest ethnic groups, representing about 45 percent and 26 percent of the population, respectively, date back centuries. The modern border between the two nations does not delineate where either group lives nor is movement across the South Sudan-Ethiopia border a new phenomenon. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

When war broke out in 2013 in South Sudan, refugees poured into neighbouring Gambella. Today, 485,000 South Sudanese refugees lived in the Gambella region, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN refugee organisation. Some displaced Nuer brought arms across the border, destabilising an already tense region. “The fact that the Nuer and Anuwak exist on both sides of the border makes it easy for people of both communities to pass backwards and forwards, taking with them their conflicts both between the two tribes but also at the national level,” says John Ashworth, who has been working in South Sudan and the surrounding region for the last 30 years. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

This is the closest you will come to finding a boat in Gambella nowadays. “The river used to be full of boats and trade before 2013 and the war broke out,” one Gambella local says of the Baro River and its tributaries flowing across the border. Nowadays the most urgent traffic around the city comes from the plethora of white SUVs, plastered with the logos of almost every NGO to be found in Ethiopia. Some locals are employed by NGOs as drivers and translators, but the vast majority of locals struggling to get by see little of the money generated by Ethiopia’s refugee industry. In 2018 the budget required for Ethiopia’s total refugee population—around 900,000 people—was estimated at 618 million dollars. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Gambella city has an intriguing modern history, in which the Baro River plays a crucial part. In the late 19th century, Britain came knocking, seeing the Baro’s navigable reach to Khartoum as an excellent highway for exporting coffee and other produce to Sudan and Egypt. The Ethiopian emperor granted Britain the use of land for a port and Gambella was established in 1907. Only a few hundred hectares in size, this tiny British territory became a prosperous trade centre as ships from Khartoum sailed regularly during the rainy season when the water was high. The Italians captured Gambella in 1936 but it was back with the British after a bloody battle in 1941. Gambella became part of Sudan in 1951, but was reincorporated into Ethiopia five years later. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Here a woman sells fish in a small market. Everyday life appears slow and peaceful. But the Gambella region has gained a reputation as a no-go area among foreigners and Ethiopians alike. Back in 1962, the first of several civil wars broke out next door in Sudan at the start of a 50-year quest for South Sudanese independence, and from which Gambella could not remain immune. The stigma attached to the region hasn’t been helped by the Ethiopian government’ tendency to take a dismissive view of the region, underscored by a prejudice—one that extends throughout Ethiopian society—that the blacker one is the less Ethiopia you are, says Dereje Feyissa, a senior advisor at the Addis Ababa-based International Law and Policy Institute. “The Ethiopian centre has always related to its periphery in a predatory way,” Dereje says. “This is not only because of the geographic distance but also the historical, social and cultural differences which the discourse on skin colour signifies.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Local men carrying wrapped-up dried fish on their heads walk through an Anuwak village. The Gambella region is something of an anomaly in Ethiopia, displaying stronger historical, ethnic and climatic links to neighbouring South Sudan. “This was not the Ethiopia of cool highlands and white flowing traditional dress, but Nilotic Africa, in the blazing southwestern lowlands near the Sudanese border,” recalls Steve Buff, a former Peace Corps Volunteer. “This was much closer to our childhood National Geographic images of Africa than any place we’d seen before in Ethiopia.” Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Since the latest peace agreement between South Sudan’s warring factions late last year, the indications seem more promising than with previous peace agreements that fell apart. By December 2018, the security situation in South Sudan had significantly improved, stated Jean-Pierre Lacroix, head of United Nations Peacekeeping. And by February this year, David Shearer, head of the UN Mission in South Sudan, told reporters in New York that political violence has “dropped dramatically.” Shearer added that the success of the peace agreement will be partly measured by the extent to which people return to home towns and villages. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

This year the UNHCR has reported spontaneous movements of South Sudanese refugees from various Gambella-based camps heading toward South Sudan, an estimated 5,000 since mid-December. Perhaps a good sign of what Shearer discussed? Interviews with the refugees, however, indicated they were returning to South Sudan for fear of retaliatory action following clan-based conflicts in camps, while some said they were going to visit their families, and would eventually return to the camps in Gambella. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

“This time it is different, as the international community is involved,” a South Sudanese refugee in Gambella remarked while reading Facebook posts on his smartphone about the latest peace deal. At the same time, the time it has taken to overcome the animosity of the past and get to the current stage of the peace process suggests there will be South Sudanese refugees in Gambella for some time yet. Meanwhile, the Baro River will flow on undisturbed by river traffic through a land of limbo caught up in the surrounding troubles, its seemingly placid surface deceiving to the eye. “There are plenty of crocodiles, though you won’t see them as the water is high,” a local man says. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Former rebel fighters from South Sudan’s civil war, manually packing improved sorghum seed in Yambio, South Sudan. over 1,900 ex-fighters have been taken through rehabilitation programmes, and have been released to join vocational training and engage in agribusiness, with others being integrated into organised forces. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
YAMBIO, South Sudan, Mar 13 2019 (IPS)

Almost a month to go ahead of the traditional rainy season in Gbudue State, 430 kilometres west of South Sudan’s capital, Juba, smallholder farmers are already tilling their land as they prepare to plant purer, drought-tolerant seeds.

“We are preparing our land this early because we are never sure when it is likely going to rain, and yet we cannot afford to miss out on the seed production programme, which is our new source of livelihood,” said Antony Ezekiel Ndukpo, a father of 19 children and a smallholder farmer based in Yambio region.

Africa’s youngest nation does not have reliable weather and climate information services, and this forces farmers to rely on traditional methods of forecasting, which are no longer accurate due to what experts say is climate change. However, the process of multiplying drought-tolerant seed is being taught to local farmers through a new initiative meant to promote peace in the country.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), in collaboration with the Gbudue State and the Netherlands government, is working with a local seed company and local smallholder farmers to produce fast-maturing improved seeds of different, drought-tolerant crop varieties that can be planted in the coming seasons by thousands of young men and women fighters who are returning home from the conflict.

Since 2013, South Sudan has experienced war between the government and opposition chiefs, which has led to deaths of thousands and the displacement of hundreds of thousands. According to the United Nations, since 2013 “more than 2.2 million refugees have fled across the border, famine in some areas, and a devastated economy.”

Antony Ezekiel Ndukpo with a packet of certified maize seed that he and other smallholders like him have produced in Gbudue State. Local smallholder farmers are being taught to produce fast-maturing improved seeds of different drought-tolerant crop varieties. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Farmers are taught how to take the pure versions of breeder’s and foundation seed and produce certified seed.

Breeder’s seed is produced from a pure or nucleus seed. This is further bred under supervised conditions into foundation seed for the sake of producing certified seed.

“As much as we are seeking peace, we must face the reality and use climate-smart techniques so as to make a meaningful change especially for a country that has just been at war,” said Dr Jane Ininda, a plant breeding expert at the AGRA.

“We need to give farmers drought-tolerant seeds because we are never sure of the climatic conditions ahead, and we need fast maturing varieties to escape the drought in case the duration of the rainy season turn out to be too short,” Ininda told IPS.

Over the course of the last six years a number of peace agreements have been signed, and as a result, many young people who had been recruited by rebel groups have begun returning home. In order to reintegrate them into normal life, the government wants them to start engaging in income-generating activities.

Previously “the government could apprehend and imprison all the ex-fighters returning from the bush,” Pia Philip Michael, the Gbudue State Minister for Education, Gender and Social Welfare, told IPS in an exclusive interview. “But we later found that most of them were children aged between 12 and 17 years, and the best way to help them was to draft a re-integration proposal and implement it.”

According to the minister, nearly all the returnees confessed that they joined the rebel groups because they were promised a constant salary of 200 dollars every month, and “this points to a livelihood issue,” he said.

According to the Governor of Gbudue State, Daniel Badagbu, guns cannot be used to win the war. “All we need is to create jobs, especially for the youth by introducing them to agribusiness and giving them livelihood skills through vocational trainings,” he told a United Nations Mission that visited Gbudue State late February.

In Gbudue State alone, over 1,900 ex-fighters have been taken through rehabilitation programmes, and have been released to join vocational training and engage in agribusiness, with others being integrated into organised forces.

“Creating livelihoods and economic empowerment is the only way of creating peace,” reiterated Badagbu.

“It all begins with seed,” said AGRA’s Ininda. “If we have to make a difference, then we need to avail certifiable seed to all famers, and it should be compatible with the prevailing climatic conditions,” she told IPS.

Unfortunately, the country does not have a system for seed certification in place. AGRA and its partners were forced to import breeder’s and foundation seed from the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) in Uganda.

With this seed, local seed company Global Agriculture Innovation and Solutions (GAIS) has trained 7,200 smallholder farmers in Gbudue and Lakes States on seed multiplication.

To multiply, the seed has to be planted in an isolated place, so that it does not collect pollen grains from other varieties of maize to maintain purity. The farmers are also taught about agronomic practices and what works best to ensure good quality seed, how to irrigate the seed in low rainfall in order to sustain growth. 

“In the two states, we concentrate on improved seeds of fast-maturing maize varieties, groundnuts, sorghum and cowpeas, which are the most appreciated food crops in these two states,” said Rahul Saharan, the Chief  Executive Officer for GAIS.

The farmers have already produced the first season of foundation seed.

While in most countries these processes are supervised by seed certifying agencies, because there are none present in South Sudan, GAIS does this.

The main aim of the project is to have sufficient seed that can be distributed to many farmers to improve their harvests. The country heavily relies on food aid, and that is evident at the Juba Airports, where the number of United Nations cargo and mission planes outnumber commercial jets.

“We are happy that we can now produce improved seed from our own soils. I believe this will yield better than the seeds we’ve been planting, which were grown in different places with different environmental conditions,” said Ndukpo.

According to the Netherlands Director-General for International Cooperation Reina Buijs, it is only by taking action that peace will prevail in South Sudan.

“It is good to see the government, the private sector, the civil society, the clergy, and the people come together for the sake of peace,” Buijs told IPS. “There can be many nice words on paper, or spoken, but if it does not translate in concrete actions, people cannot believe any more.”

“It feels great to see the donor support being translated into future hope for the people and in implementing the peace agreement,” she said, adding that the Netherlands would be proud to continue supporting such initiatives in South Sudan.

“There’s been very little accountability in South Sudan for what is chronic, endemic problem of sexual violence against women and girls,” the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 19 2019 (IPS)

Women and girls continue to face the brunt of violence in the northern region of South Sudan with persistently high and brutal levels of sexual violence, a new report found.

Despite the signing of a peace deal nearly five months ago, United Nations investigators have found an “endemic” rise in cases of sexual violence in South Sudan’s Unity State.

“There’s been very little accountability in South Sudan for what is chronic, endemic problem of sexual violence against women and girls,” said the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) spokesperson Rupert Colville.

“Virtually complete impunity over the years, as a result, very little disincentive for these men not to do what they’re doing,” he added at the launch of the report.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet also expressed concern over the widespread issue, stating: “The volatility of the situation in South Sudan combined with the lack of accountability for violations and abuses committed throughout Unity, likely leads armed actors to believe that they can get away with rape and other horrific forms of sexual violence.”

Between September and December 2018 alone, at least 175 women and girls experienced sexual and physical violence. Of these cases, 64 were girls, some as young as eight years old.

U.N. Missions in South Sudan (UNMISS) and OHCHR researchers found that most of the victims were attacked on roads as they traveled in search of firewood, food or water, commodities which have been limited since the start of the conflict in 2013.

One woman recounted her experience, stating: “We women do not have a choice…if we go by the main road, we are raped. If we go by the bush, we are raped…we avoided the road because we heard horrible stories that women and girls are grabbed while passing through and are raped, but the same happened to us. There is no escape—we are all raped.”

The 30-year-old survivor was raped on three separate occasions, each time around the same location to or from food distribution sites in Bentiu.

Almost 90 percent of the women and girls were raped by more than one perpetrator and often over several hours, the report found.

The report also observed that many of the attacks were premeditated and organised, stating: “The ruthlessness of the attackers appears to be a consistent feature of sexual violence documented during this investigation.”

In another incident in November, a woman who was two months pregnant suffered a miscarriage after being gang-raped.

Survivors also described being beaten with rifle butts, sticks, and cable wires if they attempted to resist or after they were raped.

A 50-year-old survivor told investigators she was beaten after trying to keep armed men from taking her 25-year-old daughter.

“Some of them threw punches and kicks on me for not allowing them to take my daughter. Those armed men were just like my sons, but they were so cruel. They do not have mercy,” she said.

Among the factors that have contributed to the rise in attacks against women and girls is the large number of fighters on “standby” mode awaiting disengagement and withdrawal.

Though a peace agreement was signed in September 2018, the new transitional government will not be put into effect until May, leaving members of numerous armed forces in limbo.

“A lot of these young men who are heavily armed, are just waiting around…This is a very toxic mix, and there are also youth militia which some of these official groups ally with and you don’t know exactly who they are; they’ve been heavily involved as well,” Colville said.

President Salva Kirr of South Sudan. The United Nations has urged Kirr to carry out investigations and seek justice for survivors of sexual violence in the northern region of the country. Credit: Elias Asmare/IPS

Impunity and the lack of accountability have also led to the normalisation of violence against women and girls, and both UNMISS and OHCHR have urged President Salva Kiir to carry out investigations and seek justice for survivors.

Upon hearing about reports of mass report, an investigation was carried out by a South Sudanese committee. However, they denied the allegations and declared that the rapes were “not a true story.”

While the current peace deal seems volatile, it is increasingly urgent for the new South Sudan to act and protect women and girls.

“Sadly, we have continued to receive reports of rape and gang rape in northern Unity since the beginning of this year,” Bachelet said.

“I urge the Government of South Sudan to take adequate measures – including those laid out in the peace agreement – to protect women and girls, to promptly and thoroughly investigate all allegations of sexual violence and to hold the perpetrators accountable through fair trials,” she added.

The UN Security Council. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28 2016 (IPS)

Nine of the world’s top ten arms exporters will sit on the UN Security Council between mid-2016 and mid-2018.

The nine include four rotating members — Spain, Ukraine, Italy and the Netherlands — from Europe, as well as the council’s five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

According to 2015 data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), these nine countries make up the world’s top ten exporters of arms. Germany ranked at number 5, is the only top 10 exporter which is not a recent, current or prospective member of the 15-member council.

However, Pieter Wezeman, Senior Researcher in the Arms and Military Expenditure Programme at SIPRI told IPS that he was not “surprised at all” to see so many arms exporters on the council.

“In reality it is business as usual: the five permanent members of the Security Council are of course in many ways the strongest military powers,” said Wezeman.

Just two permanent members, the United States with 33 percent and Russia with 25 percent, accounted for 58 percent of total global arms exports in 2015, according to SIPRI data. China and France take up third and fourth place with much smaller shares of 5.9 percent and 5.6 percent respectively.

The status of several rotating Security Council members as arms exporters while “interesting”, may be mostly “coincidence,” added Wezeman.

Current conflicts in Yemen and Syria pose contrasting examples of the relative influence that Security Council members have as arms exporters.

“Some of the major crises that the Security Council is now grappling with, particularly Yemen for example, have in large part been brought about the actions of its own members in selling arms to conflict parties,” Anna Macdonald, Director of Control Arms told IPS.

“We’ve been calling persistently for a year now for arms transfers to Saudi Arabia to be suspended in the context of the Yemen crisis, because of the severe level of the humanitarian suffering that exists there and because of the specific role that arms transfers are playing in that.”

Macdonald says that the transfer of arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen violates both humanitarian law and the Arms Trade Treaty.

Domestic pressure from civil society organisations, however, have caused some European countries, including Sweden which will join the Security Council in January 2017, to restrict arms sales to Saudi Arabia, said Wezeman. Sweden, which will hold a seat on the council from January 2017 to December 2018, comes in as the world’s number 12 arms exporter.

However arms exports from Security Council members are not necessarily a significant source of weapons in conflicts under consideration by the council.

For example, council members have been hinting at the prospect of an arms embargo against South Sudan for much of 2016, however the weapons used in South Sudan are not closely related to exports from Security Council members.

“South Sudan is a country which acquires primarily cheap, simple weapons. It doesn’t need the latest model tank, it can do with a tank which is 30 or 40 years old,” said Wezeman.

According to Wezeman, it is more likely that political rather than economic considerations impact Security Council members’ decisions regarding arms embargoes, since profits from arms sales are “limited compared to their total economy.”

“Most of the states that are under a UN arms embargo are generally poor countries where the markets for anything, including arms, are not particularly big,” he added.

Overall, however Macdonald says that Security Council members have special responsibilities in the maintenance of international peace and security, and this extends also to their particular responsibilities as arms exporters.

“We would obviously cite the UN Article 5: promote maintenance of peace with the least diversion for armament,” she said.

“We would argue that the 1.3 trillion that’s currently allocated to military expenditure is not in keeping with the spirit or letter of the UN charter,” she added, noting that this is significantly more than it would cost to eradicate extreme poverty.

Young South Sudanese refugees studying in the library of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Addis Ababa. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Nov 1 2016 (IPS)

A concerned-looking group of refugees gather around a young woman grimacing and holding her stomach, squatting with her back against a tree. But this is no refugee camp, rather the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) compound just off a busy main road leading to Sidist Kilo roundabout in the Ethiopian capital.

After a couple of minutes, the pain has subsided enough to let her talk. She says has been experiencing abdominal pains for a few weeks, though in answer to one particular question she manages a smile before replying she doesn’t think it’s a pregnancy. She says she arrived from Eritrea about seven months ago in an attempt to join her husband in Italy.“Refugees in Ethiopia is a business, that’s what needs to be addressed. But it’s not just here, it’s happening all over Africa.” -- Shikatende, a Congolese refugee in Addis Ababa

Ever since Ethiopia’s late long-term ruler Meles Zenawi established an open-door policy toward refugees, the country’s refugee population has swelled to more than 700,000, the largest in Africa. And due to ongoing crises in neighbouring countries such as South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia, that number isn’t shrinking. In the first week of October about 31,000 people streamed over the border from South Sudan into Ethiopia’s western region.

Providing refuge, however, doesn’t extend to also providing employment rights. Ethiopia has plenty on its hands trying to satisfy its indigenous mushrooming young population that needs jobs. Hence the joint initiative by the UK, the European Union and the World Bank to address both dilemmas through the building of two industrial parks to generate about 100,000 jobs, at a cost of 500 million dollars, with Ethiopia required to grant employment rights to 30,000 refugees as part of the deal.

But after the announcement comes the thornier issue: putting it all into action.

“All the stakeholders of this project need to get their heads together and come up with a workable formula that would benefit both Ethiopians and the refugees,” says Kisut Gebreegziabher with the Ethiopia office for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “There needs to be a clear policy of engaging the refugees in this project, including clarity about the level of their engagement.”

Yemeni-Ethiopian women stuck in Ethiopia due to fighting in Yemen. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

The initiative is part of a pilot programme also supporting Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Mali, and according to those involved, reflective of a new strategy for tackling the migrant crisis afflicting both Europe and Africa, based on a shift in developmental aid toward focusing on economic transformation in developing countries.

“We’re putting migrant-related issues at the heart of our support to countries,” Francisco Carreras, Head of Cooperation at the Delegation of the European Union to Ethiopia, says of the 250 million dollars coming from the EU. “Our investment is not going to solve the problem but it may have a domino effect by showing others that this can work.”

Hopeless days

“I’ve been idle for three years and my plan is to remain idle, that’s all I can do,” says 28-year-old Daniel, a qualified dentist who fled Eritrea for Ethiopia after his involvement with a locally produced publication drew the government’s wrath. Based on his qualifications he managed to find a potential healthcare job in Addis Ababa. “The employer said I was a good match but when he checked with the authorities they said I couldn’t be employed.”

Although Ethiopia’s authorities often turn a blind eye to refugees doing casual work, Ethiopia’s proclamation on refugees prohibits them from official employment.

“If Ethiopia feels for refugees, why doesn’t it change the law so they can work?” says Shikatende, a 35-year-old Congolese refugee who has been in Ethiopia for seven years. “It’s a free prison here. We are free to stay but with no hope or future.”

A change in the law will be required for the industrial park initiative, observers say, although any wholesale opening of Ethiopia’s job market to refugees is highly unlikely while Ethiopia’s 100 million population continues growing by 2.6 percent a year.

“That means creating millions of new jobs every year, the challenge for Ethiopia is huge,” Carreras says, adding that the giving of millions of euros to Ethiopia is far from altruism. “It’s in our own interests and a matter of survival for us: we can’t be surrounded by countries in difficulties and expect that building a wall or the sea alone will keep us sanitized from others’ problems.”

In the Jesuit Refugee Service compound in Addis Ababa, South Sudanese play their dominoes with much passion. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Now in its 20th year, the JRS compound resembles a microcosm of Africa’s—and the Middle East’s—troubles, hosting refugees from South Sudan, Congo, Uganda, Somalia, Eritrea, Yemen, Burundi and more. The organisation aims to assist 1,700 people in 2016, says Hanna Petros, the centre’s director, noting that Addis Ababa contains up to 20,000 refugees. “That’s registered ones—there are others who aren’t registered.”

Build it and they will come…or will they?

Despite his enthusiasm for the project, Carreras admits that success requires fending off myriad challenges.

“You’ve got to build the right sectors in the right places and ensure the right procurement—achieving all those ‘rights’ isn’t easy,” he says. And even if all that is pulled off, he adds, you’ve then got to attract the investors, after which you have to make sure it’s all sustainable: investors must obtain enough profit so they remain and don’t leave after a couple of years.

Those connected to the Ethiopian government appear confident that history is on Ethiopia’s side.

“Thirty years ago, large-scale labour left the U.S. and Europe and moved to China,” says Zemedeneh Negatu, an economic adviser to the Ethiopian government. “But monthly labour costs there now are around 450 to 600 dollars a month—Ethiopia is a fraction of that, added to which a lot of the raw materials are already coming from here.”

Hence Ethiopia’s embracing of industrial parks, which Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has placed at the forefront of economic strategy.

In addition to the two parks being funded by the joint initiative, another seven are in the process of being built at a rough cost of 250 million dollars each. One industrial park is already operating around Awassa, about 300km south of Addis Ababa, where it’s serving as a promising bellwether having attracted more investor interest than it could accommodate, Carreras says.

But all of a sudden Ethiopia’s reputation as a safe investment option—attracting tens of billions of dollars in foreign investment over the past decade—is looking increasingly tenuous.

Protests against the government that have been smouldering since November 2015 have taken on a more violent edge recently. At the beginning of October, more than two dozen foreign companies suffered millions of dollars in damage.

The timing clearly doesn’t help when it comes to luring foreign investors into industrial parks. By the middle of October foreign embassies in the capital were holding situation briefings with concerned investors to try and allay mounting concerns. And at least those foreign investors have options.

“The situation makes me nervous,” Daniel says. “Not only am I a foreigner but I’m from an enemy country. It could get bad. They can beat me or kill me, there’s no one to protect me.”

Wrong sort of human capital

“It was a bold and brave decision by Ethiopia to offer to take in foreigners when so many of its own have dire needs,” Carreras says, contrasting this stance with how Hungary recently voted against housing about 18,000 refugees.

But at the same time, there is a less salubrious side to the refugee situation in Ethiopia. Encountering groups of refugees in Addis Ababa, it’s not long before someone is sidling up to you, eyes furtively glancing around, wanting to talk about problems.

Many have harsh words for both UNHCR and Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA), while giving an impression of rank corruption in certain areas.

Refugees talk of thousands of dollars changing hands so Ethiopians can pose as refugees for resettlement in Europe, scholarship funding meant for refugees being given to Ethiopians, and the numbers of refugees in Ethiopia being inflated to ensure foreign funding keeps coming in.

“The numbers are accurate and based on research by UNHCR,” says Zeynu Jernal, ARRA’s deputy director. “We gain no financial benefits from the Ethiopian operation and are in fact underfunded—last year the required 280-million-dollar budget was only 60 percent funded.”

Zeynu acknowledges that giving 30,000 refugees jobs still leaves many more without—hence other schemes being initiated: 20,000 refugee households being given land so they can farm, thereby benefiting a total of about 100,000; 13,000 long-term Somali refugees being integrated into the eastern city of Jijiga with resident and work permits; and higher education opportunities for refugees who pass the university entrance exams.

In official quarters there is praise for the industrial park initiative, with talk of how it fits into a “new and all-encompassing approach towards alleviating the plight of refugees staying in Ethiopia” through better and more work opportunities, and through improved local integration and assimilation. Some of the refugees in Addis Ababa who have been following news about the initiative online, however, seem less sure whether refugees will really benefit.

“Refugees in Ethiopia is a business, that’s what needs to be addressed,” Shikatende says. “But it’s not just here, it’s happening all over Africa.”

He adds that another problem is the muddling of three types of refugees: economic refugees seeking better work opportunities, so-called supporter refugees trying to join relatives who have already settled abroad, and “real” refugees who meet the terms laid out by the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention.

“If you want to solve the refugee problem you need to deal with the real cause of refugees which is African leaders—but you [foreign donors] are providing them with more money,’ Shikatende says.

When it comes to a timeline for completion of the two industrial parks, how refugees will be chosen for the earmarked jobs, the challenges that need to be overcome to make the project a success, both UNHCR and ARRA say it is too early to comment although meetings are ongoing to hash out the logistics.

“We are waiting for the plan,” says one refugee organisation worker.

A delegation from the UN Security Council visited South Sudan at the beginning of September 2016. UN Photo/Isaac Billy.

By Jonathan Rozen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2016 (IPS)

Nearly one month after UN Security Council members visited troubled South Sudan, disagreement reigns over even the limited outside measures proposed to try to bring the security situation in the world’s newest country under control.

“To fix South Sudan you will need 250,000 soldiers, you will need four or five billion dollars per year. Who is going to do that? Nobody.” Berouk Messfin, Senior Researcher with the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa, told IPS.

While it is clear that neither an arms embargo nor an additional 4000 UN troops – two measures currently on the table – will be a panacea for troubled South Sudan, there is a slim hope that they may pressure the country’s leadership to act in the interests of its people.

As UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told a high-level meeting on South Sudan’s humanitarian situation on September 22: “Time and again, (South Sudan’s) leaders have resorted to weapons and identity politics to resolve their differences.”

For three days in early September Security Council members traveled to South Sudan. At the end of the visit a ‘joint communiqué’ was issued that seemingly brokered an agreement with the interim Transitional Government of National Unity. It outlined the strengthening of the existing 12,000-troop UN peacekeeping mission (UNMISS) through an additional 4000-troop Regional Protection Force, and the removal of restrictions to humanitarian access. But in the days since the communiqué, South Sudanese officials have insisted that specifics of the additional force remain unresolved.

“We have agreed in principle … but the details of their deployment, the countries that will contribute … that is the work that is left now,” Hussein Mar Nyuot, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management for the South Sudan government told IPS. “I don’t see the difference that this [4000] will come and do.”

The proposed additional force would be under the command of UNMISS and was endorsed in July by the east African Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) body leading the South Sudan peace talks. Building on UNMISS’ existing mandate, which already calls for the “use all necessary means” to protect UN personnel and civilians from threats, the Security Council believes the additional troops would strengthen the security situation.

The force is to be deployed as soon as possible, Hervé Ladsous, Under Secretary General for UN Peacekeeping Operations, told reporters Friday. Though he also said they were trying to elucidate “contradictory statements” from the capital, Juba.

In this context, human rights advocacy groups, along with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, have continued their calls for the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo to stop both sides’ continued militarization.

“It’s going to be more difficult for parties to the conflict to get access to ammunition and supplies,” Louis Charbonneau, UN Director for Human Rights Watch, told IPS. “Combine it with the boosting of UNMISS … [and] it’s going to make a difference for civilians.”

However, the South Sudanese government, whose soldiers have been implicated in ethnically motivated killings, rape, and looting, disagrees on the value of an embargo.

“[The] issue is not actually the arms that are coming … even if you have an arms embargo there are already arms in the hands of the local people … the arms that are coming in are not actually the ones causing any problems,” Hussein Mar Nyuot told IPS.

If they say they want to have [an] arms embargo, ok, but what will you do with the arms that are in the hands of the people?” he continued. “We should encourage the government to disarm the civilian population.”

Peacekeepers and UN police officers (UNPOL) with the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). Credit: UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein

As a party to the conflict, South Sudan’s government is not impartial in their position, however they are also not entirely alone in their hesitance. “[An embargo] has to be a last course … we are not there yet,” Mahboub Maalim, Executive Secretary of IGAD, told IPS.

Despite the existing arms in the country and the potential for continued illicit inflows, targeted sanctions by the Security Council may signal deeper commitment to ending the violence and protecting civilians. Nevertheless, neither an embargo nor 4000 additional troops will cure the political divisions among South Sudan’s leadership, which lie at the heart of the conflict.

Paths forward

“The South Sudanese have a string to hang on now … and that is the implementation of the [August 2015] agreement,” Maalim said. “It has had some problems because of the July incident, but it’s going to come on track,” he added referring to violent clashes which took place in South Sudan in July, bringing the country to the brink of all-out war.

However, not everyone agrees on the viability of the previous agreement.

“You have two sides that are not negotiating in good faith … who do not understand how to implement peace agreements they have signed,” said Messfin.

So what is to be done? Beyond the intended value for the protection of civilians, additional troops and restrictions will only go so far without political commitment from the country’s leadership.

Conflict prevention in South Sudan is about strategically applied political leverage, Cedric de Conning, Senior Researcher at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, explained to IPS.

A protection force like a reinforced peacekeeping mission can only implement what is agreed to politically, and the warring parties are not committed and remain mistrustful. While immediate action is necessary to save lives, there will eventually need to be a “reset” and a new administration, he continued.

Meanwhile, civil society groups have also reported increased repression of their activities, indicating a further weakening of South Sudan’s social resilience.

“There has been a steady uptick in press freedom violations in South Sudan in recent months,” Murithi Mutiga, East Africa correspondent for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told IPS. “We have seen a number of cases of newspaper outlets being arbitrarily closed down, the most prominent cases being the Nation Mirror and the Juba Monitor.”

Press freedom can support the pursuit of a sustained cessation of hostilities, urged CPJ, because accurate and accessible public information allows citizens to better understand how to react to crises without turning to violence. A well-informed population may also be better positioned to define a peaceful future for their country.

The importance of uninhibited civil society for conflict prevention also matches the priorities outlined in two identical resolutions passed by the UN Security Council and General Assembly in April, which recognize pathways to “sustaining peace.” Notably, this includes the development and maintenance of social, political and economic conditions necessary for conflict to be prevented.

South Sudan has experienced persistent violence since 2013, when armed conflict broke out between groups loyal to president Salva Kiir and opposition leader in exile Riek Machar. Fighting escalated along ethnic lines, pitting Dinka against Nuer, until a peace agreement was signed in August 2015. But fighting continued and escalated in July 2016 with a series of clashes in Juba, which left approximately 300 dead. Over the last three years thousands have been killed, over 1.6 million people remain internally displaced, and roughly 4.8 million currently suffer from food insecurity, according to the UN.

While the implementation of September’s joint communiqué will be reviewed with next steps considered at the end of the month, South Sudan’s Humanitarian Response Plan is severely under-funded at just over 50 percent; despite there being no doubt that South Sudan needs immediate assistance.

But this will only serve as a stop-gap against man-made famine. While the Security Council may still unite for the application of an embargo, the fate of South Sudan ultimately lies with its leadership. Their ability to find a lasting agreement, with support from the UN, the African Union, and IGAD, hinges on their willingness to stop the conflict.

“The lives and future of an entire generation hang in the balance,” Anthony Lake, Executive Director of UNICEF, said Thursday. “Literally the future of South Sudan.”

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni in 2015. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy.

By Gabriel Odima
St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, Sep 27 2016 (IPS)

Uganda has and continues to play a major role in fueling the conflict in South Sudan. The recent events in South Sudan have brought that moral challenge into a very sharp focus.

The banishment of democracy from and suppression of the human rights of the citizens in South Sudan have persisted for the last five years since the birth of the nation. What appeared to be a hidden agenda is beginning to emerge in South Sudan.

These sad events in South Sudan have some similarities with events in Uganda. In 1981 thirty five years ago and fifteen days after elections in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni plunged Uganda – where peace had returned following the fall of Idi Amin – to war. Museveni launched the war in what became known as the Luwero Triangle, a district adjacent to and north of Kampala, the capital of Uganda.

The war was a direct attack on democracy. It made the policy and work of the newly elected government in healing and reconciliation, development, rehabilitation, and transformation towards a culture of peace extremely difficult.

Like the case of South Sudan, the international community turned a blind eye. The continued support of Museveni’s rule in Uganda for the last 30 years raises very serious concern regarding the implications of U.S. foreign policy in Africa. The circumstance in which Museveni launched his war against the constitution and people in February 1981 exposed most clearly that he is a man of violent disposition who has a thirst for power in its most naked and atavistic form. Single handed, Museveni has exported this violent approach to South Sudan.  Indeed, all the subsequent wars which he waged in Luwero, Northern Uganda, Eastern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo and South Sudan were totally unnecessary and cannot be justified.

During the Luwero war, Museveni and his army exhibited a very high degree of a most ignoble mendacity- not only as a war exigency but also as a means to conceal their crimes against humanity. They would, for instance, attack a village posing as government troops, cause much havoc, including massacres, and then on cue, the aggressors would hurriedly depart from the scene only for second unit of Museveni’s army to conveniently arrive to rescue the village from”government troops”. The second unit using a combination of persuasion and coercion would then cause the exodus of the villages to fortresses under the control of the insurgents after ransacking and destroying much of and in the village. The ignoble mendacity in the fact that at the time those atrocities were committed by Museveni’s army, road, foot paths and even  cattle tracks had been heavily manned by them and government troops were nowhere in the interior of Luwero District or in the village.

It became routine and an article of faith in Museveni’s subsequent wars in Northern Uganda, East, West Uganda, as well as in Rwanda, DR Congo and South Sudan, for atrocities committed by his army to be credited to his victims.

Those who are in the position to help the people of South Sudan to find and form a basis for harmony and rebuilding of South Sudan carry a very heavy burden and responsibility.

The Ugandan military regime, right from its installation in 1986 by the gun and bloodshed, has consistently, arrogantly and cynically suppressed and never permitted the citizens and their organized political parties to enjoy the freedom to hold opinions on political or public matters except the opinion of the regime. The fact that never, in the past, had the people of Uganda known so much death, oppression and repression as under the present military regime has been and is still being strenuously concealed by world leaders.

The cause of Democracy and the enjoyment by the citizens of human rights and freedoms have suffered in Uganda and South Sudan and will continue to suffer so long as politicians, church leaders and foreign governments and media give support and credibility to oppressive and repressive regimes established by the gun. The support and the credibility sometimes give the impression that the givers have removed the victims, that is, the oppressed citizens from the human race.

The general trend has been in many African countries for the Church leadership, politicians, the media and the international community to turn a blind eye on the atrocities in Uganda and South Sudan.

There are several reasons for the silence of these groups on democracy and observance of human rights in Uganda and South Sudan. Two of them stands out. The first is the tendency of both the spiritual and laity Christian leaders in a country faced with a difficult political or economic situation to accept wittingly or unwittingly a regime established by the gun and bloodshed. The second is the powerful influence of external forces namely, foreign governments, international media and human rights organizations when they give support and accolades to regimes established by the gun and bloodshed.

In 1971, the international media uniformly described Idi Amin repeatedly and for a whole year as “the gentle giant”. The evidence of massacres and terror by Amin’s soldiers was of no interest to the media until much later. Foreign governments also showed no interest in the evidence and Amnesty International, for instance, never reported even once throughout Amin’s rule of over eight years on the observance of human rights in Uganda.

In the case of South Sudan and Uganda, for instance, the military regime waged vicious wars to hold on to power and to ignore the lives of their citizens. There will be no peace in South Sudan as long as President Museveni of Uganda continues to play a role in fueling the conflict there.

The promotion and development of democracy and its attendant enjoyment of human rights by the citizen is under attack in Uganda and South Sudan not only by those holding the guns but also by the donors who provide funds indiscriminately. The donors know that no military regime in Africa, from Kampala through Juba is accountable to the people but still credit such regimes with accountability.

It is amazing and foreboding of hard and evil days ahead for Africa that although for the past 50 years, African countries have been largely ruled either by military dictators or single parties, opinions in the donor countries which have been in recent years strongly against single party rule are now shifting towards and in favor of military rule and against multiparty rule.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect IPS’s editorial policy.

Excerpt:

Of the 69 journalists who died on the job in 2015, 40 per cent were killed by Islamic militant groups like Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Startlingly more than two-thirds were targeted for murder, according to a special report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in its annual report that nine of those killings took place in France, second to Syria as the most dangerous country for the press in last year.

Globally 69 journalists were killed due to their vocation, including those slain for their reporting and those caught in crossfire or in conflict. The total for 2015 is higher than the 61 journalists killed in 2014.

The CPJ says it is investigating the deaths of a further 26 more journalists during the year to determine if they too were work-related.

In 2012, 2013, and 2014, those killed in Syria exceeded those than anywhere else in the world. But the fewer number this year dying on the job in Syria only means it is so dangerous that there are fewer journalists working there, said the report. Many international news agencies chose to withdraw staff anf local reporters were forced to flee, said the CPJ.

The report cited difficulties in researching cases in conflict including Libya, Yemen and Iraq. CPJ went on a research mission to Iraq last year investigating reports that some 35 journalists from the Mosul area had gone missing, were killed or being held by Islamic State.

The militant group has a grip on the city so the CPJ said it could only confirm the deaths of a few journalists. The committee’s report said it had received reports of dozens of other journalists killed but could not independently confirm the deaths or if indeed, journalism was the reason. It said several of these journalists are currently on CPJ’s missing list.

A mural for Avijit Roy in Dhaka, one of four bloggers murdered by extremists in Bangladesh this year. Credit: AP/A.M. Ahad

The Charlie Hebdo massacre that took place in Paris last January was claimed by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Eight journalists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were targeted.

Islamic State in October murdered two Syrian journalists living in exile in Turkey, Fares Hamadi and Ibrahim Abd al-Qader. Abd al-Qader was given CPJ’s 1015 International Press Freedom Award as he was an early member of Raqaa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a Syrian citizen journalist group.

“In Bangladesh, members of an Al-Qaeda affiliate or another local extremist group, Ansarullah Bangla Team, were suspected in the hacking or stabbing murders of a publisher and four bloggers, including U.S.-Bangladeshi writer Avijit Roy, who was attending a book fair when he was killed,”said the report.

The Taliban in Pakistan claimed responsibility for the shooting of Zaman Mehsud, president and secretary-general of the Tribal Union of Journalists’ South Waziristan chapter and reporter for the Urdu-language Daily Ummat and Daily Nai Baat newspapers.

A security officer investigates the murder of Somali journalist Hindia Haji Mohamed, who was killed by a car bomb in December. Credit: AFP/Mohamed Abdiwahab

In Somalia, Hindia Haji Mohamed, a journalist and the widow of another murdered journalist, was killed in December when a bomb blew up her car in an attack claimed by the Islamic militant group al-Shabaab.

Governments around the world were jailing at least 110 journalists on anti-state charges. This is out of 199 total jailed, according to CPJ’s most recent annual prison census.—It shows how the press is being cornered and targeted by terrorists and also squeezed by the squeezed by authorities saying there were committed to fighting terror as well, it said.

More than two thirds of the journalists killed in 2015 were targeted and murdered as a direct result of their work.

The report said about one third of journalists’ deaths worldwide were carried out by criminal groups, government officials, or local residents who were, in most cases, drug traffickers or those involved in organized crime. They included Brazilian Gleydson Carvalho, shot dead by two men while he was presenting his afternoon radio show. He was often critical of politicians and police Brazil had six killings last year, the highest since CPJ began keeping records in 1992.

But Brazilian judicial authorities have made headway in combating impunity by getting six convictions in murder cases in the last two years, said the report.

South Sudan registered for the first time on CPJ’s index of slain journalists when unidentified gunmen attacked an official convoy killing five journalists traveling with a county official. The motive is still unknown but there have been various accusations. Some say this could have been the result of the power struggle between former Vice President Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir which set off the civil war in 2013.

The murders of the five landed South Sudan on CPJ’s Global Impunity Index, which highlights countries where journalists are murdered and there is no one held responsible so their killers go free.

South Sudan, Poland and Ghana appeared on CPJ’s killed database for the first time. In Poland, Łukasz Masiak, was fatally assaulted in a bowling alley after telling colleagues he feared for his life. He was the founder and editor of a news website and reported on crime and drugs and pollution. In Ghana, radio reporter George Abanga, was shot dead on his way back from covering a cocoa farmers dispute.

CPJ cites these trends from its research:

• Seventeen journalists worldwide were killed in combat or crossfire. Five were killed on a dangerous assignment.
• At least 28 of the 47 murder victims received threats before they were killed.
• Broadcast reporting was the most dangerous job, with 25 killed. Twenty-nine victims worked online.
• The most common type of reporting by victims was politics, followed by war and human rights.

CPJ, in 1992, began compiling detailed records on all journalist deaths. If motives in a killing are unclear, it is possible that a journalist died in relation to his or her work and CPJ classifies the case as “unconfirmed” and continues to investigate. CPJ said its list does not include journalists who died of illness or natural causes or were killed in car or plane accidents unless the crash considered hostile action.

(End)

SPLM-N soldiers clean weapons they say they took from government forces. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 1 2015 (IPS)

Despite last year’s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the proliferation of conventional weapons, both legally and illegally, continues to help fuel military conflicts in several countries in the Middle East and Africa, including Syria, Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen.

Described as the first international, legally binding agreement to regulate the trade in conventional arms, the ATT was also aimed at preventing the illicit trade in weapons.

“Arms transfers are still continuing – transfers that states know will contribute to death, injury, rape, displacement, and other forms of violence against human beings and our shared environment." -- Ray Acheson, Director, Reaching Critical Will, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)
But the first Conference of States Parties (CSP1) to the ATT, held in Cancun, Mexico last week, was the first meeting to assess the political credibility of the treaty, which came into force in December 2014.

Ray Acheson, Director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS the failure of CSP1 to adopt robust, comprehensive reporting templates that meet the needs of effective Treaty implementation is disappointing and must be corrected at CSP2, which is to be held in Geneva in 2016.

She said the working group process leading up to CSP2 must be more transparent and inclusive with regards to civil society participation than the process that lead to the provisional reporting templates.

“CSP1 is over, but implementation of the Treaty is just beginning,” she said.

“Arms transfers are still continuing – transfers that states know will contribute to death, injury, rape, displacement, and other forms of violence against human beings and our shared environment,” said Acheson who participated in the Cancun meeting.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, who also attended the Cancun conference, told IPS that CSP1 was intended to provide the administrative backbone for the implementation of the ATT.

States Parties (the countries that have completed the ratification or accession process) largely succeeded in this effort, she said.

Goldring said CSP1 accomplished a great deal, but the real tests still lie ahead.

The Conference agreed on the basic structures for the new Secretariat to implement the Arms Trade Treaty, but that’s simply a first step.

She said full implementation of the Arms Trade Treaty requires action at the national, regional, and global levels.

One indication of countries’ commitment to the ATT will be the extent to which the countries with substantive and budgetary resources help the countries that lack those capacities, said Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

Some of the world’s key arms suppliers are either non-signatories, or have signed but not ratified the treaty. The ATT has been signed by 130 states and ratified by 72.

The United States, Ukraine and Israel have signed but not ratified while China and Russia abstained on the General Assembly vote on the treaty – and neither has signed it.

The major arms suppliers to sign and ratify the treaty include France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain.

The ATT Monitor, published by WILPF, quotes a U.N. report, which says South Sudan spent almost 30 million dollars last year on machine guns, grenade launchers, and other weapons from China, along with Russian armoured vehicles and Israeli rifles and attack helicopters.

The conflict in South Sudan has been triggered by a power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar: a conflict “which has been fueled with arms from many exporters,” according to the Monitor.

China told the Cancun meeting it would never export weapons that do not relate to its three self-declared principles: that arms transfers must relate to self-defence; must not undermine security; and must not interfere with internal affairs of recipients.

Acheson said the ATT can and must be used as a tool to illuminate, stigmatise, and hopefully prevent arms transfers that are responsible for death and destruction.

By the end of the Conference, she said, States Parties had taken decisions on all of the issues before it, including the location and head of the secretariat; management committee and budget issues; reporting templates; a programme of work for the inter-sessional period; and the bureau for CSP2.

The CSP1 voted for Geneva as home of the treaty’s permanent Secretariat – against two competing cities, namely Vienna, Austria; and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago – while Dumisani Dladla was selected to head the Secretariat.

Acheson said while most of these items are infrastructural and procedural, they do have implications for how effectively the Treaty might be implemented moving forward.

On the question of transparency, unfortunately, states parties failed to meet real life needs, she added.

States parties also did not adopt the reporting templates that have been under development for the past year. But this is a relief, she added.

States that want to improve transparency around the international arms trade, and most civil society groups, are very concerned that the provisional templates are woefully inadequate and too closely tied to the voluntary and incomprehensive reporting practices of the U.N. Register on Conventional Arms.

“As we conduct inter-sessional work and turn our focus to implementation, we must all act upon the ATT not as a stand-alone instrument but as a piece of a much bigger whole,” she noted.

ATT implementation must be firmly situated in wider considerations of conflict prevention, resolution, and peacebuilding.

Acheson also said the ATT could be useful for confronting and minimising the challenges associated with transparency and accountability.

“It could help prevent atrocities, protect human rights and dignity, reduce suffering, and save lives. But to do so effectively, states parties need to implement it with these goals in mind.”

Commenting on the prepared statements at the high level segment of the conference, Goldring told IPS the United Nations and its subsidiary bodies could save a great deal of time if countries submitted their opening statements electronically in advance of the relevant meetings instead of presenting them orally in plenary sessions.

States Parties were not successful in developing agreed procedures for countries to comply with the mandatory reporting requirements of the ATT.

The group was only able to agree on provisional reporting templates, deferring formal adoption to the second Conference of States parties. This is an extremely important omission.

Goldring said countries reporting on the weapons that were imported or exported or transited their territory is a critical transparency task.

She said reporting needs to be comprehensive and public, and the data need to be comparable from country to country and over time.

“The current templates do not meet these tests,” she said pointing out that another important task will be trying to convince leading suppliers and recipients to join the treaty.

In a pleasant contrast to many U.N. meetings, NGOs were included in both the formal plenary and informal working group sessions.

The Rules of Procedure focus on consensus, but provide sensible options if it’s impossible to achieve consensus. This is a welcome development, as it will make it much more difficult for a small number of countries to block progress, she said.

“But in the end, the most important measure of success will be whether the ATT helps reduce the human cost of armed violence. It’s simply too early to tell whether this will be the case,” Goldring declared.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Africa's children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 26 2015 (IPS)

“Poverty has become part of me,” says 13-year-old Aminata Kabangele from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me.”

Aminata, who fled her war-torn country after the rest of her family was killed by armed rebels and now lives as a as a refugee in Zimbabwe’s Tongogara refugee camp in Chipinge on the country’s eastern border, told IPS that she has had no option but to resign her fate to poverty.

Despite the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, African children still stand as the number one victims of suffering and destitution across the continent.“Poverty has become part of me. I have learned to live with the reality that nobody cares for me” – Aminata Kabangele, a 13-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo

“In every country you may turn to here in Africa, children are at the receiving end of poverty, with high numbers of them becoming orphans,” Melody Nhemachena, an independent social worker in Zimbabwe, told IPS.

Based on a 2013 UNICEF report, the World Bank has estimated that up to 400 million children under the age of 17 worldwide live in extreme poverty, the majority of them in Africa and Asia.

According to human rights activists, the growing poverty facing many African families is also directly responsible for the fate of 200,000 African children that the United Nations estimates are sold into slavery every year.

“Many families in Africa are living in abject poverty, forcing them to trade their children for a meal to persons purporting to employ or take care of them (the children), but it is often not the case as the children end up in forced labour, earning almost nothing at the end of the day,” Amukusana Kalenga, a child rights activist based in Zambia, told IPS.

West Africa is one of the continent’s regions where modern-day slavery has not spared children.

According to Mike Sheil, who was sent by British charity and lobby group Anti-Slavery International to West Africa to photograph the lives of children trafficked as slaves and forced into marriage, for many families in Benin – one of the world’s poorest countries – “if someone offers to take their child away … it is almost a relief.”

Global March Against Child Labour, a worldwide network of trade unions, teachers’ and civil society organisations working to eliminate and prevent all forms of child labour, has reported that a 2010 study showed that “a staggering 1.8 million children aged 5 to 17 years worked in cocoa farms of Ivory Coast and Ghana at the cost of their physical, emotional, cognitive and moral well-being.”

“Trafficking in children is real. Gabon, for example, is considered an Eldorado and draws a lot of West African immigrants who traffic children,” Gabon’s Social Affairs Director-General Mélanie Mbadinga Matsanga told a conference on preventing child trafficking held in Congo’s southern city of Pointe Noire in 2012.

Gabon is primarily a destination and transit country for children and women who are subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2011 human trafficking report.

In Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, a study of child poverty showed that over 70 percent of children are not registered at birth while more than 30 percent experience severe educational deprivation. According to UNICEF Nigeria, about 4.7 million children of primary school age are still not in school.

“These boys and girls, some as young as 13-years-old, serve in the ranks of terror groups like Boko Haram, often participating  in suicide operations, and act as spies,” Hillary Akingbade, a Nigerian independent conflict management expert, told IPS.

“Girls here are often forced into sexual slavery while many other African children are abducted or recruited by force, with others joining out of desperation, believing that armed groups offer their best chance for survival,” she added.

Akingbade’s remarks echo the reality of poverty which also faces children in the Central African Republic, where an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 boys and girls became members of armed groups following an outbreak of a bloody civil war in the central African nation in December 2012, according to Save the Children.

Violence plagued the Central African Republic when the country’s Muslim Seleka rebels seized control of the country’s capital Bangui in March 2013, prompting a backlash by the largely Christian militia.

A 2013 report by Save the Children stated that in the Central African Republic, children as young as eight were being recruited by the country’s warring parties, with some of the children forcibly conscripted while others were impelled by poverty.

Last year, the United Nations reported that the recruitment of children in South Sudan’s on-going civil war was “rampant”, estimating that there were 11,000 children serving in both rebel and government armies, some of who had volunteered but others forced by their parents to join armed groups with the hopes of changing their economic fortunes for the better.

Meanwhile, back in the Tongogara refugee camp, Aminata has resigned herself. “I have descended into worse poverty since I came here in the company of other fleeing Congolese and, for many children like me here at the camp, poverty remains the order of the day.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

A man at a political rally held by Salva Kiir, President of the Republic of South Sudan, in Juba, March 18, 2015. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy

By a Global Information Network correspondent
JUBA, Aug 18 2015 (IPS)

Dismissing efforts, including those of U.S. President Barack Obama, to sign off on a peace agreement and end the 20-month-long civil war in the world’s newest nation, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir declined to sign, saying he needed more time for consultations.

President Kiir’s team reportedly had “reservations” over the deal and wanted an additional 15 days before returning to sign, Seyoum Mesfin, mediator for IGAD, a regional group, told the media.

Rebel leader and former Vice-President Riek Machar did sign the agreement.

Among the issues in dispute were the structure of the government, the powers of the president, and the vice president, power-sharing percentages, security issues, and the demilitarisation of Juba and other places.

Then, in a move that would add fuel to the fire, President Kiir on Monday removed four elected state governors and arrested one of them.

The actions by the South Sudanese leader threw the U.S. strategy into a tailspin. A State Department release expressed “deep regret” for the failure to sign a peace proposal by Monday’s deadline.

“The United States deeply regrets that the government of South Sudan chose not to sign … We call on the government to sign the agreement within the 15-day period it requested for consultations,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at his daily briefing.

Meanwhile, a film that shows that cost of war and colonial exploitation in South Sudan, opened in New York on Monday. The film, “We Come As Friends” is a work by Austrian-born filmmaker Hubert Sauper who previously made the film “Darwin’s Nightmare,” a film about Uganda.

That film, nominated for the Academy Award, “sifted through the wreckage of globalization by way of the fishing export industry in Lake Victoria, the impact on local Tanzanians, and a fast-and-loose subculture of Russian cargo-plane pilots.

“We Come as Friends” is firmly rooted in reality, wrote The New York Times in a review. “The ‘land grab’ confirmed in the nighttime scene with the tribal leader has occurred frequently, in Sudan and elsewhere, said Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the think tank Oakland Institute, which has studied such issues.

“It’s not one of a kind — it’s not a small trend; it’s widespread,” Ms. Mittal said of the kind of “resource theft” that Sauper depicts.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

President Barack Obama greets embassy staff and their families during a meet and greet at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, July 25, 2015, before going to Addis Ababa. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By a Global Information Network correspondent
ADDIS ABABA, Jul 28 2015 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama, in a meeting with regional African leaders, threatened new sanctions for the warring factions in South Sudan if a peace deal is not be reached by Aug. 17.

“The possibilities of renewed conflict … is something that requires urgent attention from all of us,” Obama said. “We don’t have a lot of time to wait.”

Pres. Obama outlined the options at a meeting Monday in Addis Ababa with leaders of Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, the chair of the African Union and the foreign minister of Sudan. “Liberating” South Sudan, with support from the U.S., Britain and Norway, was supposed to be the high point of Obama’s Africa policy. Four years after independence, the nation is a humanitarian disaster.

In fighting showing no signs of letting up, thousands of people have been killed and more than 2.2 million displaced, since violence erupted in December 2013, according to the U.N. Human rights abuses and indiscriminate killings have been carried out by both sides – namely the South Sudanese government led by President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, and forces loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer.

At the session of leaders, Obama set an Aug. 17 deadline for a peace agreement signed by all combatants although no consensus was reached on Monday on what to do if the deadline comes and goes. Numerous sanctions were floated – an arms embargo and the freezing of assets and ability to travel – backed by the international community. Obama expressed his preference for sanctions over intervention, as proposed by one of the leaders.

Western diplomats have pushed countries in the region to withdraw support for the South Sudanese combatants in order to make peace. Uganda, for example, openly supports the South Sudan government. Sudan supports Machar’s rebels.

Those at the talks included Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour and the chair of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

In a press briefing, a senior administration official told reporters that “venal leaders” had squandered a huge opportunity which the international community had helped them win. “So we can’t undo this for them,” he said, referring to the crisis. “They’ve got to fix this (themselves).”

Fighting has been fiercest in the Upper Nile and Unity States, where the nation’s two major oil fields are found. With the onset of the rainy season, an already dire situation has grown worse.

“Tens of thousands of people are cut off from aid and medical care as fighting intensifies in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State,” Doctors Without Borders, the international medical humanitarian organization, said in a statement last week.

Meanwhile, rebel spokesman James Gatdet welcomed Obama’s comments, saying “peace is possible”. But a spokesman for South Sudan rejected the plan and accused the international community of “jeopardizing the chances of the people of South Sudan.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

So extreme are gender inequalities in South Sudan that a young girl is three times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than to reach the eighth grade – the last grade before high school – according to Plan International, one of the oldest and largest children’s development organisations in the world.

A vast majority of South Sudanese girls will have been victims of at least one form of gender-based violence in their young lives, but those living in Eastern Equatoria State face a particularly abhorrent practice which is a tradition among at least five of the state’s 12 tribes – being given away as ‘blood money’.

Dina Disan Olweny, Executive Director of the non-governmental Coalition of State Women’s and Youth Organisations, is one of the rights activists pushing for an end to harmful traditions and injustices facing young girls in South Sudan. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

“When a person kills another person, the bereaved family expects to be given ‘blood money’ as compensation,” Dina Disan Olweny, Executive Director of the non-governmental Coalition of State Women’s and Youth Organisations, told IPS.

Most tribes demand compensation when a life has been taken in one of the regular conflicts over cattle and pasture, revenge killings and other inter-village conflicts, and although 20 to 30 goats is what many tribes demand in form of compensation, Olweny explained that “most families can either not afford or are unwilling to pay so much, and prefer to give away one of their girls as compensation.”

According to child protection specialist, Shanti Risal Kaphle, “a young girl is taken as a commodity that can be given in lieu of someone’s lost life, or as ‘blood money’, to keep the family and community in peace.”

Kaphle explained that the girl’s life is negotiated “without her information and consent and is subject to violence, abuse and exploitation.”

The practice of girl child compensation has not escaped the eye of the government, which set an estimated 500 dollars as the amount for compensation for a life, but tribe people still prefer to be given a girl, saying that the figure set by the government is too little.“A young girl is taken as a commodity that can be given in lieu of someone’s lost life, or as ‘blood money’, to keep the family and community in peace” – child protection specialist Shanti Risal Kaphle

Experts say that a girl is also preferred as compensation by a bereaved family because she can either be married to one of their own without having to pay a bride price, or she can be married off when she turns 12 and attract a herd of goats.

Many of the girls handed over as compensation are often as young as five years. They are expected to forget their birth families and start afresh, severing all contacts with their natural families once the exchange has been concluded.

At this point their lives can take a dramatic turn for the worse through multiple abuse. These girls may be “subjected to child labour, and to sexual, physical and emotional abuse – to escape this hell, more of them now prefer to commit suicide,” said Olweny.

Residents here say that customary laws which perpetuate and rubber stamp these forms of abuse are seen to play a vital role in conflict resolution because they are considered cheap, accessible and the decisions are made on the basis of customs they are familiar with.

Kaphle said that customary laws and decisions are also perceived as more amicable and less time-consuming.

However, girl child compensation is just one of a multitude of abuses that the girl child in South Sudan faces.

The state of Western Bahr El Ghazal, for example, has a notorious tradition of widow compensation which has seen many young girls denied an opportunity to go to school because they are forced into early marriages.

Linda Ferdinand Hussein, Executive Director of the non-governmental organization Women’s Organisation for Training and Promotion, explained how this tradition works.

“When a man’s wife dies for whatever reasons, the man can demand to be given back the bride price that he had paid.” This price varies from one family to the next “but most families are unwilling to pay back the bride price so they give the man one of the deceased wife’s younger sisters as compensation.”

Four years after South Sudan won its independence and became the world’s youngest nation, child protection specialists like Hussein are raising the alarm. “Gender-based violence against young girls continues to be perpetrated in a variety of ways in both peacetime and during conflict,” she said.

A report released Jun. 30 by the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS) revealed that the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and associated armed groups recently carried out a campaign of violence against the population of South Sudan, which was marked by a “new brutality and intensity” and included the raping and then burning alive of girls inside their homes.

A report released last year by leading humanitarian organisation CARE, titled ‘The Girl Has No Rights’: Gender-Based Violence in South Sudan, highlighted the extreme injustices faced by young girls in the country.

These injustices continue to serve as obstacles towards accessing education and later exploiting the opportunities that life presents for those who have gone through school.

According to Plan International, 7.3 percent of girls are married before they reach the age of 15 years and another 42.2 percent will have been married between the ages of 15 and 18. And, although 37 percent of girls enrol in primary school, only around seven percent complete the curriculum and only two percent of them proceed to secondary school.

Edited by Phil Harris

South Sudanese Police Cadets taking oath during their graduation ceremony at the Juba Football Stadium. September 17, 2012. Credit: UN Photo/Isaac Billy Gideon Lu'b

By Beatrice Paez
SAINT JOHN, New Brunswick, Canada, Jun 18 2015 (IPS)

For the second year in a row, South Sudan has been designated as the most fragile nation in the world, plagued by intensifying internal conflict that has displaced more than two million of its people.

Headline-making events of the past year have spurred much of the movement of countries’ rankings – for better or worse – in the Fragile States Index (FSI), a joint annual report by Foreign Policy magazine and think-tank Fund for Peace (FFP) released on Jun. 17.“For me, Nigeria was one of the most interesting stories of the year. All indicators showed intensive pressures on all fronts...and yet people were able to really rally at the local, national level.” -- Nate Haken

Sub-Saharan Africa found itself leading the pack, with seven out of the top 10 countries ranked as the most fragile. As far as regional trends go, the Islamic State’s encroaching influence pulled states such as Yemen, Libya, Syria and Iraq into the top 10 most-worsened countries of 2015.

Cuba stood out as the most-improved country this past decade, owing its designation to the thawing of relations with the United States and the gradual opening of its economy to foreign investment. Though trends suggest the nation is on track to improving conditions, there remains the challenge of access to public services and upholding human rights.

In an effort to measure a state’s fragility, the index accounts for event-driven factors and makes use of data to illuminate patterns and trends that could contribute to instability. The report analysed the progress of 178 countries around the world.

“At the top of the index, countries do tend to move minimally, but at the centre of the index, you tend to see a lot more movement,” said Nate Haken, senior associate of FFP. “That’s partly because fragility begets fragility and stability begets stability.”

And yet, the report highlighted, there are outliers like Nigeria that defy easy categorisation even as pressures on all fronts – political, social, economic – would indicate a country on the brink of descending into conflict.

“For me, Nigeria was one of the most interesting stories of the year. All indicators showed intensive pressures on all fronts,” Haken told IPS. “Oil prices were down, there was more killing this past year.”

But in an unexpected turn, Haken noted, the political opposition led by Muhammadu Buhari emerged as a credible threat to incumbent Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party. He added that many expected a polarising outcome that would pit the north and south against each other, whatever the outcome.

“I think most observers looking at these trends thought this was bound to be a disaster,” said Haken. “Every empirical measure shows a high degree of risk and yet, people were able to really rally at the local, national level.”

Meanwhile, Portugal and Georgia joined the ranks of Cuba for the most improved, with strides being made in the economy.

Whereas some countries’ progress or decline has held steady, a closer look can reveal an emerging narrative, said Haken. The United States’ year-over-year score (ranked at 89) has remained flat, but group grievances – tensions among groups – has been increasing since 2007, with respect to the immigration of children fleeing Central America and protest against the police over racial relations.

Far from being a predictive tool, the index functions as a diagnostic tool for policy makers working in human rights and economic development to identify high-priority areas, he noted. As well, it serves to turn the spotlight on countries that seemingly have marginal bearing for the international community.

In the case of the Ebola crisis in West Africa, countries like Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone may not have figured large in headlines, but the “ripple effects across the region” also had far-reaching consequences for the international community as the world scrambled to contain the outbreak, Haken noted.

Demographic pressures – massive rural-urban migration – coupled with lack of proper road infrastructure gave way to the spread of Ebola.

“One thing that came out of the index is how critical infrastructure is for sustainable human security,” he said. “… Once it began to spread, it was difficult for medical personnel and supplies to reach the rural areas.”

This regional crisis, in particular, served as a reminder that “post-conflict” nations “on path to recovery” still face vulnerabilities, the report noted.

The index relies on 12 indicators (plus other variables) to make its assessment. They account for state legitimacy; demographic pressures; economic performance; intervention of state or non-state actors; provision of public services; and population flight, among others. Each indicator is given equal weight, and countries take a numerical score, with one for the best performance and 10 for the worst.

On this basis, policy makers are encouraged to use the index to frame research questions and to help determine the allocation of humanitarian aid.

Since 2014, FSI moved away from the use of the term “failed” in favour of “fragile,” as a way of acknowledging that in some instances, the pressures a state faces can be beyond its control, said Haken.

For instance, he cited refugee crises in which governments – ill-equipped or not – take on a large number of refugees.

“Failure connotes culpability somewhere, whereas that’s not what this index was ever trying to do,” he said. “It was looking at factors – some of which governments have influence over, some of which they don’t.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Oxfam estimates that 800,000 people in South Sudan have reached “emergency levels” of hunger. Credit: Ann-Kathrin Pohlers/IPS

By Ann-Kathrin Pohlers
MUNICH, Germany, May 28 2015 (IPS)

After peace talks failed earlier this month, the ongoing conflict in South Sudan between government forces and opposition forces that began at the end of 2013 is having a severe impact on the country’s food security and civilian safety.

While fighting continues, widespread burning, destruction, and looting of property have aggravated the efforts of both sides to gain control of the oilfields in the north of the country.

"South Sudan is locked in a horrible cycle of conflict and abuse and there has been absolutely no accountabillity whatsoever for any of these horrific abuses." -- Skye Wheeler, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Researcher for Sudan and South Sudan
“South Sudan is locked in a horrible cycle of conflict and abuse and there has been absolutely no accountabillity whatsoever for any of these horrific abuses,” Skye Wheeler, Human Rights Watch (HRW) Researcher for Sudan and South Sudan, based in Nairobi, told IPS.

To date, 10,000 people have been killed and two million forced to flee their homes.

Aid organisations are calling this a severe humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has decried the brutal violence against civilians and children, including the burning down of entire villages and the rapes and murders of women, and children as young as seven years old, over the past few weeks.

The states of Unity and Jonglei are the worst affected. It is unclear exactly who is responsible for the violence and destruction of property.

An estimated 13,000 children under 15 years of age have been recruited by both government and opposition forces, an act that constitutes a war crime, not only in South Sudan but also according to international law.

Another concern is the displacement of civilians and destruction of agriculture.

“People should be planting crops right now, instead they are fleeing,” Pawel Krzysiek, a staff member of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, told IPS.

With the rainy season fast approaching, farming communities in Unity State need to plant their crops now to ensure decent harvests, something they cannot do due to the fighting. Many people have little choice but to depend on food aid.

According to Oxfam,  two-thirds of the population is now food insecure, with 7.8 million people in “Phases 2, 3 and 4 of food insecurity.”

The number of hungry people is projected to rise to 4.6 million by the end of July, accounting for 40 percent of the population. The rights group further estimates that 800,000 people have reached “emergency levels of hunger, facing extreme and dangerous food shortages.”

An Oxfam statement released Wednesday cautioned that this latest analysis “was undertaken before the recent escalation of the war, so it is expected that for thousands of people in South Sudan, the outlook is now even worse.”

Hundreds of thousands of people in South Sudan have been cut off from food and medical supplies by fresh bouts of fighting. Credit: Ann-Kathrin Pohlers/IPS

Children have been badly hit, with malnutrition at a “critical level” in 80 percent of all counties in the Greater Upper Nile, Warrap and Northern Bahr El Ghazal states.

Dependence on food aid will only increase now with worsening displacement – gaining access to those most in need is becoming increasingly difficult, aid workers say.

“ICRC is providing food and medicine for about 120,000 people. Many of them are displaced as a result of the fighting, which is challenging our aid workers,” Krzysiek says.

More than two million people are displaced, about 500,000 of them are completely cut off from services.

Besides civilians, aid organisation now find themselves affected, with ongoing violence limiting both the options and capacity of various humanitarian groups.

According to Krzysiek, medical facilities in Unity State and Jonglei State were attacked, targeted and detroyed. Aid organisations were forced to evacuate staff to ensure security.

ICRC was forced to move its base from the city of Kodok to Oriny to the disadvantage of civilians.

“The hospital of Kodok is the only one in its region and therefore very important. People now have even more limited access to health services and food because of the country‘s insufficient infrastructure,” Jean-Yves Clemenzo, based at the ICRC headquarters in Geneva, told IPS.

Humanitarian organisations putting their operations on hold could spell disaster for the roughly 50 percent of South Sudan’s 12 million who are almost entirely dependent on the delivery of aid supplies.

UNICEF estimates it will distribute aid to meet the humanitarian needs of children alone to the tune of 165 million dollars by the end of 2015.

Human Rights Watch is very concerned about the continous deterioration of the conflict. Over the last couple of months, dozens of cases have been documented in which civilians were arrested arbitrarily, beaten up or tortured by unidentified forces.

“It looks like we are seeing a repeat of late 2013, when government forces moved through these areas burning, looting and destroying large parts of it,” Wheeler told IPS.

South Sudan became an independent state in 2011, in a moment that marked the end of a two-decade-long war for independence, which claimed 2.5 million lives. But peace was short-lived.

In December 2012 a power struggle between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his then-vice president Riek Machar escalated after Machar was accused of attempting to depose Mayardit.

War broke out once again on Dec. 15, 2013, and since then the world’s ‘newest country’ has been consumed by a tide of violence.

Back in March 2015, peace talks hosted by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa failed.

In response, the United Nations security council imposed sanctions on the country, in a resolution that threatened travel bans and asset freezes on individuals or entities “responsible for, complicit in, or engaged directly or indirectly in actions or policies threatening the peace, security or stability of South Sudan.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

By Jean-Marie Guéhenno
NEW YORK, May 21 2015 (IPS)

When the Cold War ended in 1991, there was hope the U.N. Security Council would be able to take decisive action to create a more peaceful world. Early blue helmet successes in Cambodia, Namibia, Mozambique, and El Salvador seemed to vindicate that assessment.

Photo courtesy of Jean-Marie Guéhenno

This optimism was tripped up by the tragedies that followed in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Rwanda. U.N. peacekeepers were bystanders to horrible atrocities. Peacekeeping shrank rapidly.

By the end of the 1990s, common wisdom was that such missions were a thing of the past, and that from now on regional organisations would take charge.

Pundits were proven wrong, and in 1999 U.N. missions were deployed in quick succession to Kosovo, East Timor, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In terms of legitimacy and force-generation, they showed that the U.N. still had comparative advantages over all other organisations. But it was not at all clear if this was enough to allow the peacekeepers to succeed.

This was the turning point when I assumed the post of U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations in 2000. Over the next eight years, I learned that reviving and rebuilding U.N. peacekeeping was much more than a managerial and military challenge.The U.N. has reached a new turning point. Should the world double down on its investment, or cut its exposure before significant losses appear?

Today’s peacekeeping is a political enterprise whose success rests on the support of major powers, a viable political process between the parties to a conflict, and a wise and limited use of force.

This all came into vivid focus around the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Security Council was divided, the U.N. was besieged by scandals and the U.S. administration was at best indifferent to the United Nations. Yet the renewed expansion of peacekeeping continued unabated. To this day, it has not been reversed, and some 107,000 peacekeepers are presently deployed in 16 missions.

In 2000, a panel of experts led by Lakhdar Brahimi, a former foreign minister of Algeria, had made recommendations to avoid a repetition of the disasters of the 90’s: strengthen and professionalise peacekeeping, and don’t deploy peacekeepers where there is no peace to keep. Fifteen years later, U.N. peacekeeping is more professionally managed, and yet, it is still in a very precarious situation.

The demands on peacekeeping have grown too fast, the operational role of the U.N. is clearly ahead of its capabilities, and most peacekeeping missions are deployed in places where war has only subsided, not ended. The U.N. has reached a new turning point. Should the world double down on its investment, or cut its exposure before significant losses appear?

The reality is that the U.N. cannot just cut and run: in South Sudan, more than 100,000 people are sheltered in U.N. compounds, and their lives would be at risk if the U.N. were to pull out. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the state remains very weak, and there is little confidence that the country would not slide back into chaos if the mission was abruptly withdrawn. What is to be done?

First, acknowledge that force indeed matters, and can provide indispensible political leverage. That means a further strengthening of the operational capacities of the U.N. An 8.47-billion-dollar budget looks enormous, but the fact is that the world is doing peacekeeping on the cheap. This apparently high figure is but a fraction of what the U.S. and NATO were spending in Afghanistan.

But subcontracting U.N. operations to organisations like NATO is not a viable strategy for the future: it is very costly, and politically discredited by the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan. Peacekeeping is all in the art of implementation, and when the U.N. is left outside the military chain of command, it quickly loses control over the political strategy.

There is no alternative to a direct U.N. operational role if peacekeeping is to retain a reputation of impartiality, but specific capacities are needed to be effective.

Western militaries, which have largely shunned U.N. peacekeeping since the end of the nineties, need to re-engage with U.N. peacekeeping in a significant way, either as blue helmets, or through ad hoc arrangements that will allow for the provision of quick reaction forces and dedicated assets.

Second, return to politics. It is unrealistic to expect a U.N. force – or any force for that matter, as the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences show – to impose a peace. An exclusive focus on military operations to protect civilians, as in Congo, can become a diversion.

An extensive definition of terrorism, which enrolls the U.N. in the so-called “war on terror”, is shrinking the political space in which it should operate. The most important contribution that the U.N. can make to peacemaking is not fighting; it is to support inclusive political processes.

The rhetoric of peacekeeping has been ahead of its reality, and we should not oversell it. It is an enormous responsibility to intervene in the life of others, and the path between irresponsible indifference and reckless activism is narrow.

To gain domestic support for foreign interventions, peace operations have been presented as opportunities to reengineer countries. As outsiders, we should be more modest.

A genuine international community, based on shared values, should remain our goal, but it will not exist unless we can shore up the imperfect states that are its building blocks. Many are crumbling faster than new structures can be built, but the international order is still based on their primary responsibility.

For an organisation of states like the U.N., this is an existential challenge. For the people who are the unwitting victims of collapsed states, this is a matter of life and death. Even if the risk of failure is always there, abstention should never be the option of choice.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

A U.N. peacekeeper from Niger is ready to begin a patrol at the Niger Battalion Base in Menaka, in eastern Mali, Feb. 25, 2015. Credit: UN Photo/Marco Dormino

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 21 2015 (IPS)

The United Nations is fighting a losing battle against a rash of political and humanitarian crises in 10 of the world’s critical “hot spots.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says even the U.N.’s 193 member states cannot, by themselves, help resolve these widespread conflicts.“We need more support and more financial help. But, most importantly, we need political solutions.” -- U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric

“Not a single country, however powerful or resourceful as it may be, including the United States, can do it,” he warned last week.

The world’s current political hotspots include Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic – not forgetting West Africa which is battling the spread of the deadly disease Ebola.

Historically, the United Nations has grappled with one or two crises at any given time. But handling 10 such crises at one and the same time, said Ban, was rare and unprecedented in the 70-year history of the United Nations.

Although the international community looks to the world body to resolve these problems, “the United Nations cannot handle it alone. We need collective power and solidarity, otherwise, our world will get more and more troubles,” Ban said.

But that collective power is conspicuous by its absence.

Shannon Scribner, Oxfam America’s humanitarian policy manager, told IPS the situation is serious and Oxfam is very concerned. At the end of 2013, she said, violent conflict and human rights violations had displaced 51 million people, the highest number ever recorded.

In 2014, the U.N. appealed for assistance for 81 million people, including displaced persons and others affected by protracted situations of conflict and natural disaster.

Right now, the humanitarian system is responding to four emergencies – those the U.N. considers the most severe and large-scale – which are Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, and Syria.

These crises alone have left 20 million people vulnerable to malnutrition, illness, violence, and death, and in need of aid and protection, she added.

Then you have the crises in Yemen, where two out of three people need humanitarian assistance; West Africa, with Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea asking for eight billion dollars to recover from Ebola; in Somalia, remittance flows that amount to 1.3 billion dollars annually, and are a lifeline to millions who are in need of humanitarian assistance, have been cut or driven underground due to banking restrictions; and then there is the migration and refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, where almost 1,000 people have died trying to escape horrible situations in their home countries, Scribner said.

The United Nations says it needs about 16 billion dollars to meet humanitarian needs, including food, shelter and medicine, for over 55 million refugees worldwide.

But U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Monday virtually all of the U.N.’s emergency operations are “underfunded”.

Last month, a U.N. pledging conference on humanitarian aid to Syria, hosted by the government of Kuwait, raised over 3.8 billion dollars.

But the United Nations is appealing for more funds to reach its eventual target of 8.4 billion dollars for aid to Syria by the end of 2015.

“We need more support and more financial help,” said Dujarric. “But, most importantly, we need political solutions.”

But most conflicts have remained unresolved or stalemated primarily due to sharp divisions in the Security Council, the U.N.’s only political body armed with powers to resolve military conflicts.

Asked if the international community is doing enough, Scribner told IPS there is no silver bullet for dealing with these crises around the world because there are so many problems causing them: poverty, bad governance, proxy wars, geopolitical interests playing out; war economies being strengthened through the shipment of arms and weapons; ethnic tensions, etc.

The humanitarian system is not built for responding to the crises in the 21st century.

She said Oxfam is calling for three things: 1) More effective humanitarian response by providing funding early on and investing more in local leadership; 2) More emphasis on working towards political solutions and diplomatic action; and 3) Oxfam encourages the international community to use the sustainable development goals to lift more people out of poverty and address inequality that exists around the globe today.

Scribner said the combined wealth of the world’s richest 1 percent will overtake that of everyone else by next year given the current trend of rising inequality.

The conflicts in the world’s hot spots have also resulted in two adverse consequences: people caught in the crossfire are fleeing war-torn countries to safe havens in Europe while, at the same time, there is an increase in the number of killings of aid workers and U.N. staffers engaged in humanitarian work.

Over the weekend, hundreds of refugees and migrant workers from war-devastated Libya died in the high seas as a result of a ship wreck in the Mediterranean Sea. The estimated death toll is over 900.

On Monday, four staff members of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF were reportedly killed in an attack on a vehicle in which they were riding in Somalia, while four others were injured and remain in serious condition.

Ian Richards, president of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions and Associations (CCISUA), told IPS: “We’re appalled at the loss of our colleagues in Garowe, Somalia and are very concerned for those injured. They truly were heroes doing great work in one of the world’s most dangerous locations.”

He said the United Nations has been clear that it will continue to operate in Somalia and “our work is needed there.”

“We support the work of our colleagues in these difficult circumstances,” he said.

At the same time, Richards told IPS, “We should not lose sight of a context in which U.N. staff and, in the case of local staff, their families, are increasingly targeted for their work.”

It is therefore important, he said, that the secretary-eneral and the General Assembly fully review the protection the U.N. provides to staff in locations where their lives are at risk, so that they may continue to provide much-needed assistance in such locations.

Oxfam’s Scribner told IPS attacks on aid workers have steadily risen over the years – from 90 violent attacks in 2001 to 308 incidents in 2011 – with the majority of attacks aimed at local aid workers. They often face more danger because they can get closer to the crisis to help others.

Because local aid workers are familiar with the landscape, speak the local language, and understand the local culture, and this also puts them more at risk, she said.

“That is why it is not a surprise that local aid workers make up nearly 80 percent of fatalities, on average, since 2001,” Scribner added.

Last year on World Humanitarian Day, the New York Times reported that the number of attacks on aid workers in 2013 set an annual record at 460, the most since the group began compiling its database, which goes back to 1997.

“These courageous men and women aren’t pulling out because they live in the very countries where they are trying to make a difference. And as such, they should be supported much more by the international community,” Scribner declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

In the face of the growing number of crises taking place at the same time worldwide, humanitarian aid organisations – many of which have already reached their financial and logistic limits – are in desperate need of global coordination.

“We feel like we’ve hit the wall,” is how U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Kyung-Wha Kang has described the dramatic situation.

This situation was the subject of the 3rd Vienna Humanitarian Congress held last week in the Austrian capital under the slogan ‘Humanitarian Aid Under Fire’.Humanitarian organisations are rethinking their strategies, especially in Syria and Iraq, and trying to include all stakeholders in a dialogue to obtain access to the people in need – Kyung-Wha Kang, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs

Opening the congress, Annelies Vilim, Director of Global Responsibility, the Austrian platform for development and humanitarian aid, told participants: “Humanitarian aid is not an act of charity. It is a human right.“

In a world in which trouble spots and wars are on the rise, the question of how aid operations are carried out most successfully to meet the necessities of recipients is becoming increasingly relevant and, noted Vilim, at this moment millions of people are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.

Among others, the goal of the congress was to make humanitarian work more visible in these difficult times and to commit decision makers at all levels to value the importance of humanitarian assistance and cooperation.

Unfortunately, sufficient funding and clear structures are lacking and already inadequate contributions are under constant threats of budget cuts.

Host country Austria itself, for example, is no exception – an OECD study has shown that state spending in 2013 was only 1.3 euro per capita, 20 times less than the amount a country of similar wealth such as Sweden was paying.

“The world is facing drastic transformations and politics are not keeping up,” complained Yves Daccord, Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

To address those challenges, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has launched an initiative, managed by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to hold the first World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey.

It will bring together governments, humanitarian organisations, people affected by humanitarian crises and new partners, including from the private sector, to draw up solutions and set an agenda for the future of humanitarian action.

Logo of the 3rd Vienna Humanitarian Congress. In the face of the growing number of crises taking place at the same time worldwide, humanitarian aid organisations are in desperate need of global coordination.

One issue that is certain to be on the agenda is the safety of aid workers. With 1.5 billion people living in conflict-affected areas, “we will unfortunately have to face more stories in the media about aid workers killed in the line of duty, of atrocities committed against innocent civilians,” said Kang.

In 2013 alone, 474 humanitarian workers were attacked, injured or abducted and 155 lost their lives.

Due to the difficult circumstances, Kang explained that humanitarian organisations are rethinking their strategies, especially in Syria and Iraq, and trying to include all stakeholders in a dialogue to obtain access to the people in need.

Controversially, this also means that for the sake of civilians, parties that are considered “terroristic” should also be involved in the process. Humanitarian actors legitimate this by upholding the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and non-discrimination in regard to beneficiaries, and independence.

It is estimated that today over 30 armed conflicts are taking place worldwide, 16 of which are considered as wars with more than 1,000 victims each year. According to the United Nations, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and the Central African Republic are ranked at the highest level of emergency.

The Central African Republic occupied some of the limelight at the Vienna congress in a panel discussion on humanitarian space and life and work in war. Two of the country’s religious leaders – Archbishop Dieudonne Nzapalainga and Imam Layama Oumar Kobine – spoke out about their fight for peace and disarmament.

Both argued that the civil war in their country was not a religious war. “Neither the Bible nor the Koran say that people should kill,” said Nzapalainga, explaining that five days after the beginning of the crisis in December 2012, religious leaders had come together to work collectively on an interreligious platform.

The problem, said the religious leaders, is that 75 percent of the country’s population is illiterate and therefore open to exploitation and recruitment by militant groups. This affects young people in particular and, because the state and government have ceased to exist, it is humanitarian workers who often fulfil the duties of the authorities.

Karoline Kleijer, Emergency Coordinator of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), described her experience of how life has become incredibly difficult for humanitarian workers in the country.

She described how shortly after arriving in the country in April 2014, armed forces entered a meeting of MSF staff and local community leaders that she was attending, opened fire and killed 20 people, including three MSF workers.

The incident had a huge impact on the organisation, she said, but despite all the difficulties “it did not stop us from working in the country. Since then, we have performed more than 10,000 operations and treated more than 300,000 people for malaria. We have delivered more than 15,000 babies and we have been continuing activities up to today.”

Although the principle that civilians have to be protected in armed conflicts and war and have a right to humanitarian assistance is embedded in the Geneva Convention, humanitarian workers have to take great risks to obtain access to the population in distress and, contrary to their neutrality, are becoming targets themselves.

“We hope that humanitarian workers will continue to take those risks, because we continue to take those risks in order to help the population in need,” said Nzapalainga.

Edited by Phil Harris    

United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) peacekeepers provide security at a trial. U.N. staffers have been killed in the country in recent years. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14 2015 (IPS)

The widespread field operations of the United Nations – primarily in conflict zones in Africa, Asia and the Middle East – continue to be some of the world’s deadliest.

The hazards are so predictable that the United Nations – and its agencies – subtly encourage staffers to write their last will before leaving home.

And working for the United Nations proved especially deadly in 2014 as its personnel “continued to be subject to deliberate attacks and exposed to hazardous environments”, according to the Staff Union’s Standing Committee for the Security and Independence of the International Civil Service.“I think the most appropriate question is: should the U.N. send staff members to places where their security and safety cannot be guaranteed?” - Barbara Tavora-Jainchill, president of the U.N. Staff Union

Asked if the United Nations was doing enough to protect its staff in these overseas operations, Barbara Tavora-Jainchill, president of the U.N. Staff Union, told IPS:  “This is a tricky question, because in principle the responsibility for the protection belongs primarily to the host country, i.e., the country where the staff member is working/living”.

“I think the most appropriate question is: should the U.N. send staff members to places where their security and safety cannot be guaranteed?” she asked.

At least, 61 United Nations and associated personnel were killed in 2014, including 33 peacekeepers, 16 civilians, nine contractors and three consultants, compared to 58 in 2013, including 33 peacekeepers and 25 civilians and associated personnel.

In 2012, 37 U.N. personnel, including 20 civilians and 17 peacekeepers, two of them police officers, were killed in the line of duty.

According to the Staff Union Standing Committee, the incident with the most casualties took place in Northern Mali, where nine peacekeepers were killed last October when their convoy was
ambushed.

Northern Mali was the most deadly place for U.N. personnel: 28 peacekeepers were killed there between June and October. And Gaza was the most deadly place for civilian personnel, with 11 killed in
July and August.

The killings, some of them described as “deliberate”, took place in Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, Cambodia, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, North Darfur, Central African Republic and Gaza.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed serious concern over the continued killings of U.N. staffers in field operations.

“I am appalled by the number of humanitarian workers and peacekeepers who have been deliberately targeted in the past year, while they were trying to help people in crisis,” he said, at a memorial ceremony last week to honour fallen staff members.

In the past year, he said, U.N. staff members were killed while relaxing over dinner in a restaurant in Kabul while two colleagues were targeted after getting off a plane in Somalia.

Speaking at the same ceremony, Ian Richards, president of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions, said: “We are asked to work in some of the world’s most difficult and dangerous places.”

He said the work is fulfilling and “we do it willingly.”  “But all we ask in return is that the Organisation do its best to protect us, look after our families, and hold those who attack us, including governments, responsible for their actions.”

In a statement released Tuesday, the Staff Union Standing Committee said South Sudan was the country with the highest number of national staff members detained or abducted.

In May, there were allegations that members of South Sudan’s security forces assaulted and illegally detained two staff members in separate incidents in Juba.

In August, South Sudan’s National Security Service detained two national staff.  And in October, eight armed men wearing plain clothes seized a World Food Programme staff member who was waiting in line for a flight from Malakal airport and drove him to an unknown location.

Scores of United Nations staff and associated personnel were also subject
to hostage-taking, kidnapping and abductions, the statement said.

The worst incidents took place in the Golan Heights, where 44 Fijian peacekeepers were detained by armed opposition elements between 28 August and 11 September last year.

Meanwhile, U.N. personnel were abducted in Yemen, the Sudan’s Darfur region, Pakistan and in South Sudan.

An international contractor from India working for the U.N Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was released on 12 June after 94 days of captivity.

Asked about “hazard pay” for staffers in overseas operations, Tavora-Jainchill told IPS staff members do get hazard/danger pay depending on conditions of the individual duty station.

She said, “Each duty station is a unique duty station and receives unique consideration for hazard/danger pay, so your question cannot be answered in a general manner.”

United Nations staff members participate in a Pension Fund and there are provisions in that pension related to their death and the payment of pension/indemnities to their survivors, she added.

Asked about the will, she said: “That question is very interesting because I also heard that and some time ago asked someone from the U.N. Administration if it was really the case.”

The response was that those staff members are asked to consider “putting their business and paperwork in order”.

“My understanding from the answer is that the paperwork might include a will, she added.”

Children at play at the Yida settlement in Unity state, in northern South Sudan. Opened in 2011, Yida has over 70,000 refugees. Some 85 percent are children and women from the Nuban Mountains of South Kordofan, who fled bombardments and violence there. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret

By Ettie Higgins
JUBA, Dec 15 2014 (IPS)

Rambang “Raymond” Tot Deng was 18 and attending his final year of school when fighting erupted in South Sudan’s capital Juba, one year ago. In the ensuing violence, as Raymond’s schoolbooks burned, thousands of South Sudanese were killed, including two of his cousins.

Many fled to U.N. bases for protection or to neighbouring countries. “I saw children killed and women killed and everybody was crying,” Raymond recalls.“Let all youth in the world facing the same thing we are, know that forgiveness is the first priority. Give us the tools, and we will create peace.” -- Rambang “Raymond” Tot Deng

It was never meant to be this way. The bells of celebration that rang around South Sudan just two years ago are today emergency sirens. And while South Sudan is a crisis for children and of young people, sparse global attention has been paid to them. This must change.

The well of pain runs deep in many parts of Africa, and yet it is young people who offer the best chance for true conflict resolution, and lasting peace. Conflict-affected youth are often the most ambitious, the hardest workers.

They want back what was taken from them: opportunity. They want an education and they want to earn a livable wage.

Since conflict began, an estimated 1.8 million South Sudanese have fled their homes. Many remain on the move, while tens of thousands are living in camps in South Sudan, such as the UN Protection of Civilian camp #1 on the outskirts of southern Juba.

Here Raymond lives alongside 10,000 other youth. Whilst ever grateful for the protection the camp offers, Raymond says: “Life in the camp is difficult. You can see people just lying, sitting down, there’s nowhere people can go, nothing for them to do.”

Raymond’s experience of war, violence and suffering has been shared by hundreds of thousands across the region. But during the past two to three decades, it has consistently been young people who have been most affected by the conflicts that have raged.

This early experience of conflict leaves young people in a kind of no man’s land. Education interrupted, opportunities crushed. In South Sudan 400,000 young people have lost the chance to have an education, in this year alone.

Hundreds of thousands more are jaded, frustrated and disconnected, putting them at a critical crossroads, do they fight or fight for peace?

“Some of the youth with whom I was together outside [the camp] joined the rebellion,” says Raymond. “They would say, ‘if I could be in this dire situation we are now in, why should I be here’?”

And yet Raymond offers an important caveat: “Fighting cannot take everybody everywhere. Only peace can unite people as one.”

How then to do this? UNICEF believes one answer is through providing essential services, and in particular, education. Basic education and vocational-skills training can lift people out of poverty by providing opportunity.

But an education can be so much more, teaching war-torn children things many of us take for granted. At school children learn about the environment, about sanitation, and the importance of good nutrition. In turn, they become agents of change, conveying good practices to their families.

Importantly, children who go to school are less likely to be recruited by armed groups. UNICEF, through Learning for Peace, our Peacebuilding, Education and Advocacy Programme, is helping to rebuild and improve schools in both conflict and former conflict zones in South Sudan, providing materials and psychosocial support to help children cope with the traumas they have suffered.

UNICEF believes a key strategy for governments, the African Union, IGAD and development agencies is to counter insecurity through harnessing and connecting with youth.

On this, Raymond should be a poster child. Despite the horror he experienced a year ago, the boredom of the camp and the frustrations of having his education suspended, he is a born peacemaker. Now part of a youth forum in the Juba camp, he leads discussions on the root causes of conflict and reconciliation.

Raymond deserves to have his voice heard. “Let all youth in the world facing the same thing we are, know that forgiveness is the first priority, he says. “Give us the tools, and we will create peace.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt: