South Sudan: Not the Independence Day Celebration Anyone Hoped For
Yesterday was the third anniversary of South Sudan’s independence. What should have been a celebration, however, was instead another day of struggling for the 1.5 million South Sudanese who have fled their homes due to renewed conflict.
The UN estimates that 5 million people will soon need help. Our CEO Justin Byworth has been in South Sudan this week speaking with families and visiting our projects. Families which just recently thought that peace was finally here to stay are now struggling to feed their children and keep them safe from the conflict.
Fighting broke out this past December, just as families were planning to celebrate Christmas. Teresa, one of the women Justin spoke to this week explained, “Three years ago I returned to South Sudan with my heart full of hope. Now war is back. At Christmas last year we had no food or water. If we went outside, we would’ve been killed.”
Like so many others, Teresa and her family are now living in the temporary Malakal camp, away from their home, schools, and access to health centres. Instead of planting crops this spring, families like Teresa’s have been focused on staying as safe as possible, and now a food shortage looms. The latest round of government peace talks failed in June and with them the hope for an end to the violence that has been plaguing this young country. Teresa and her new neighbours are now facing the prospect of a long stay in the flimsy shelters packed tightly on the muddy ground of Malakal.
World Vision UK is working with other aid organisations to try and stave off hunger for as long as possible, and is providing food for children in Malakal and other affected areas. We are also working to establish child friendly spaces, where children will have a safe place to play, gather, and learn for as long as they are living in the camps.
However, World Vision and other aid agencies working in South Sudan are struggling to fund their activities. It is sobering to think that just three years after joyous independence celebrations, refugees are fleeing the conflict in South Sudan to live in camps like Malakal, and others are leaving the country altogether for the relative safety of the camps scattered across the border in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya.
Visiting our Grow Hope garden at RHS Hampton this week has been a wonderful opportunity to celebrate Antsokia’s transformation from famine into lush and verdant region that it has become. At the same time, it serves to remind us of the vast difference between Antsokia today and areas like South Sudan, Syria, and others where children and their families still live in fear of conflict and hunger.
We want to help all children live free from those fears, and with your help we've seen we can do it. We pray that the same peace and prosperity can be brought to South Sudan and that the next anniversary of its independence can be celebrated as it should be.