South Sudan: IOM, UNHCR concerned about risks relocating refugees & returnees from border areas

“This tragic and senseless incident puts into question our entire strategy to relocate refugees arriving in South Sudan through Abyei to a safe location in Wedweil, where we opened a new settlement to receive refugees fleeing the Sudan crisis,” said Marie-Helene Verney, UNHCR Country Representative, who is also currently serving as the acting Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan. Read more.

From Radio Tamazuj
Dated Friday, 15 December 2023 - here is a copy in full:

IOM, UNHCR concerned about risks in relocating refugees and returnees from border areas

Returnees and refugees from Sudan in Renk, Upper Nile State. (File photo)

(JUBA CITY) - Two separate incidents have brought to the forefront the major challenges humanitarian agencies are facing in South Sudan, a joint IOM and UNHCR statement said earlier in the week.

In the first incident, two refugees were tragically killed in an attack against a convoy organized by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) transporting Sudanese refugees from Abyei to the Wedweil refugee settlement. On the same day, a boat facilitated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) began taking on water due to high winds and rough water – all on board were moved to different boats and proceeded safely to Malakal.

According to the UN agencies, the two incidents highlight the considerable challenges that humanitarian partners are facing trying to help refugees and South Sudanese who are fleeing the fighting in Sudan to reach safety.

The boat began taking on water on Wednesday morning as it was attempting to leave the port of Kodok, in Upper Nile State. Local authorities and humanitarian partners immediately launched a rescue operation and all on board are now accounted for and safe, the joint statement said.

Since the start of the Sudan crisis in April, IOM has moved more than 105,000 people out of Renk by river and another 59,000 by plane to their final destinations across the country.

“Transport by river remains the only viable option to move returning South Sudanese arriving through the Joda Border Crossing Point to Malakal, and from there to their final destination,” said John McCue, IOM Chief of Mission in South Sudan. “The risks and challenges are huge but keeping people in Renk is not an option as reception sites are overcrowded and provision of basic services is stretched to breaking point.”

In the other incident, two refugees were abducted on Wednesday morning as they were crossing Twic County, Warrap State on their way from Abyei to the refugee settlement of Wedweil, near Aweil in Northern Bahr-e-Ghazal State onboard a UNHCR convoy. The vehicle carrying the two refugees was surrounded by armed youth who forced all onboard to alight and abducted two men, one 21-year-old, and the other - 62, both from Sudan’s Blue Nile State. Local authorities later reported that both of them had been found dead. The rest of the convoy made its way safely to Wedweil.

“This tragic and senseless incident puts into question our entire strategy to relocate refugees arriving in South Sudan through Abyei to a safe location in Wedweil, where we opened a new settlement to receive refugees fleeing the Sudan crisis,” said Marie-Helene Verney, UNHCR Country Representative, who is also currently serving as the acting Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan.

“Humanitarian partners have taken the lion's share of the immensely challenging job of moving people in distress who arrived at the South Sudan border fleeing for safety, however, the responsibility of ensuring that returnees, refugees, and humanitarian workers are safe lies firmly with the South Sudan’s Government” she added.

Both agencies called for renewed efforts from the Government to facilitate transportation of refugees and returnees to safe locations.

According to the UN, more than 438,000 people have arrived in South Sudan to escape the conflict in Sudan since April, of which 365,000 South Sudanese and 71,000 refugees. More than 24,000 refugees are stuck in Renk to the refugee camps in Maban County, Upper Nile State due to the current conditions. The road from Maban to Renk has been destroyed by the rains and while UNHCR is currently working on repairs, it has been requesting that the relevant ministries, as well as the private sector, take their share of the works.

 

View original:

https://www.radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/iom-unhcr-concerned-about-risks-in-relocating-refugees-and-returnees-from-border-areas

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Sudan & South Sudan: Cholera crosses the Sudanese border and bursts into South Sudan refugee camps

THANKS to Lola Hierro (Hola Lola!) for informative reports and photos from Renk, South Sudan. At the Renk Transit Center, which has a capacity of 3,000 people, there are more than 16,000 current residents, and the roads that connect this out-of-the-way corner to the rest of the country are waterlogged by floods caused by end-of-summer rains. Renk’s risk lies in the fact that this [Vibrio cholerae] bacillus is transmitted through contact with contaminated foods and liquids, in conditions of overcrowding and lack of safe access to water and sanitation. Read more in this report.

From EL PLAIS

By LOLA HIERRO (Renk / Madrid)
Dated Tuesday, 12 December 2023 - 23:40 WET - full copy:

Cholera crosses the Sudanese border and bursts into South Sudan refugee camps

The Ministry of Health confirms a positive case in the Renk Transit Center, located in the north of the country, where thousands of displaced people are living shoulder to shoulder

Waiting room of the clinic located at the Renk Transit Center in northern South Sudan. ALA KHEIR (UNHCR)

South Sudan’s Ministry of Health has confirmed the first case of cholera in Renk, a city in the far north of the country that is suffering a humanitarian crisis amidst the thousands of people from Sudan who have been displaced since war broke out last April. Sudan has been struggling against an outbreak of the diarrheal disease since September 26 and to date has documented 4,000 cases and 130 deaths.

“The public is advised not to panic, as measures have been put in place to respond to this threat,” the ministry has announced. Nonetheless, in Renk, general sentiment is very different, as described via WhatsApp by Atsuhiko Ochiai, coordinator of a Doctors Without Borders (DWB) clinic located in the Zero settlement of Renk, which has more than 3,500 residents. “[The situation] is getting worse. More people come from Sudan all the time and the water, latrines, food, plastic sheets, hygiene kits, etcetera, are just not enough. Open-air defecation is common,” he warns.

Doctor Ochiai’s fears are due to a minimal health infrastructure. More than 400,000 people have crossed the border in the last eight months. They arrive in impoverished conditions, without money, without a home in which to stay, with no hope of feeding or cleaning themselves or accessing any service beyond what meager humanitarian aid they can obtain. That’s because all the most important United Nations agencies and nonprofits are present in Renk, but the funds available to help the population are not sufficient: only 32% of the more than 225 million euros required by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) have been covered. At the Renk Transit Center, which has a capacity of 3,000 people, there are more than 16,000 current residents, and the roads that connect this out-of-the-way corner to the rest of the country are waterlogged by floods caused by end-of-summer rains.

A woman cares for her son, who has been admitted to the hospital in Renk, northern South Sudan. ALA KHEIR (UNHCR)

Cholera presents a public health problem in 47 of the world’s poorest countries, where between 1.3 and four million cases are registered annually. The illness is caused by the Vibrio cholerae bacteria, which provokesd intense diarrhea, up to 20 liters a day, which can kill a person within four hours. With adequate treatment — rehydration and antibiotics in the most severe of cases— the death rate does not rise above 1%, but without it, it can soar to 50%.

Renk’s risk lies in the fact that this bacillus is transmitted through contact with contaminated foods and liquids, in conditions of overcrowding and lack of safe access to water and sanitation. This is precisely the scenario in the far north of South Sudan. If the region was already living in poverty and had been punished by nearly a decade of violence caused by internal conflicts, with 74% of the population in need of humanitarian aid, the waves of Sudanese and South Sudanese returnees from the new war have only worsened the situation.

The cholera patient identified at the transit center, a 38-year-old man who had recently crossed the border between the two states, has recovered. For the time being, no other positive cases have been reported. But the fear of new cases is very present. “When community-wide transmission of cholera happens in Renk, it will be catastrophic,” Ochiai predicts.

Doctor Francisco Luquero is the head of the team responsible for high-risk epidemic programs at the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) and was in South Sudan during the 2014-2017 outbreak that affected more than 28,000 people. The doctor explains that since 2019 there have been hardly any cases, and those that have appeared have been very mild thanks to the country’s efforts to control the previous outbreak and the prevention campaigns that have been orchestrated “We know that in these scenarios there is a high risk of transmission and that in these areas it is difficult to provide adequate treatment, so there is concern,” he says over the phone.

With Sudan’s outbreak in mind, World Health Organization (WHO) mechanisms have been activated to avoid cholera’s arrival. These mainly involve the promotion of personal hygiene, especially hand-washing, raising awareness in communities, and distributing hygiene supplies to 3,000 households, including domestic items for transporting water like disinfectants and purifiers. But such measures are nearly impossible to implement when there are thousands of people sleeping outdoors, on muddy ground where rainwater stagnates and forms putrid puddles, and where there is no sewage system or toilets.

Water stagnates between tents where thousands of refugees survive in Renk. ALA KHEIR

A month before cholera had its opening act, fears were already present. In Zero’s mobile clinic, doctor Ferida Manoah hardly had time for a break: many small patients required her attention. Patients like Nya, María’s daughter. The little girl, at just over a year old, was due for a medical check-up. Her mother brought her to the health center, accessible only by a long row of sandbags that had been placed over the stagnant water.

Since she was apparently healthy, María only received some tips on nutrition and hygiene. Above all, the latter. “We have a large number of diarrhea cases and we’ve suspected the presence of typhus, but we aren’t able to test,” said Mahoah. Before the cholera outbreak, diarrhea was the third leading cause of mortality in Renk, after malaria and pneumonia.

A simple, but elusive remedy

The plan to address cholera begins with giving specific information to all health staff and community workers on how to inform authorities if they detect a suspicious case. Until there is confirmation, an outbreak is not announced, but independent of test results, it’s very important to provide treatment to patients to avoid death by dehydration.

Blocking the entrance of the illness at the border would be ideal, but in practice that turns out to be nearly impossible. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has health stations open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., which means that for 10 hours a day there is no one available to test. Not to mention, with 2,000 to 3,000 people crossing every day, even if the stations were open 24 hours, it would be very difficult to evaluate everyone who passes through.

Drinking water station in the field of Joda, where thousands of people wait weeks to be transported to the Renk Transit Center in South Sudan. 

LOLA HIERRO

Luquero thinks that prevention at the border is not realistic because similar to people affected by Covid-19, a patient can be contagious and also asymptomatic, something that occurs in 80% of cases. Nonetheless, for him it “is super necessary to replenish kits to treat the sick, because rehydration saves lives.”

The GAVI leader trusts in the skills South Sudan showed in the past thanks to its prevention strategy. “South Sudan has taken a lot of initiative in vaccination, reactive as well as preventative,” he says. They have implemented various campaigns and since 2019, received more than three million doses through the Global Task Force on Cholera Control. “It’s true that it’s a very fragile country, but it’s also a case in which they’ve been able to successfully control a national outbreak,” he says.

Immunization campaigns, however, have not yet arrived to Renk. Luquero thinks it would be best to solicit them as soon as possible from the International Coordinating Group (ICG) on Vaccine Provision, which is in charge of emergency requests. “It’s one method that can be used to access the doses more quickly, linked to the humanitarian crisis in the north, without having to make a global vaccination plan,” he says. “What we need to do is to make a good epidemiological assessment as quickly as possible and, based on that, send the vaccine request as quickly as possible. And I emphasize speed.”

View original: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-12-12/cholera-crosses-the-sudanese-border-and-bursts-into-south-sudan-refugee-camps.html

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Sudan’s Dangerous Descent Into Warlordism

From TIME.com IDEAS

BY KHOLOOD KHAIR AND ASMAHAN AKAM

Kholood Khair is a Sudanese policy analyst and founding director of Confluence Advisory. She is now based in London. 

Asmahan Akam is a Sudanese civil society activist currently living in Boston.

Dated Thursday, 7 December 2023 12:46 PM EST - here is a copy in full:

Sudan’s Dangerous Descent Into Warlordism

The burned remnants of an MSF health post destroyed in fighting at Wunpeth village, Abyei, Sudan, August 2023.

Sean Sutton—Panos Pictures/Redux

Like millions of people from Sudan, we have seen our families suffer in the wake of a devastating war that began in April. No one in Sudan has been spared.

Both of us are lucky to have escaped with our lives but we have relatives who were killed in the fighting, kidnapped at gunpoint, and whose homes were destroyed. We receive WhatsApp messages from family members who are internally displaced, stuck at the borders or, for those able to leave Sudan, living precarious lives in neighboring countries without rights or legal status. 

For the past nine months, the vicious war being fought in our country has been far from the attention of a distracted world. Well before the current Israel-Hamas war came to dominate headlines, the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was a mere footnote on the international agenda. And yet Sudan stands on the edge of an abyss.

UNISFA peacekeepers bring wounded Misseriya people and their families from north Abyei for treatment at the Ameth Bek Hospital, August, 2023.Sean Sutton—Panos Pictures/Redux

Rival bids for power between Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the SAF leader, and RSF counterpart Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as Hemedti, underpins the war. Sudan had been run by a council of generals, including these two erstwhile allies, after a 2021 coup brought an end to civilian rule in the wake of the 2019 pro-democracy movement that deposed longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. Tensions came to a head on April 15 when fighting broke out in our home city of Khartoum, and it quickly spread to other regions of the country.

Some 10,000 people have since been killed, almost certainly a vast undercount. With at least 6 million people already driven from their homes, Sudan has the world’s largest displaced population, and the number is growing by the day as fighting intensifies.

In Darfur in particular, the situation is alarming. The RSF—which evolved from the Janjaweed militia that earned worldwide infamy during the Darfur crisis of two decades ago—has conducted a brutal campaign that is on the verge of securing full control of the region.

Rampaging across Darfur on motorcycles, horses, or pick-up trucks, the RSF and allied Arab militias have been accused of ethnically motivated killings against the Massalit and other non-Arab communities; indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against civilians; and widespread sexual violence and rape. (The U.S. government recently determined that both the SAF and RSF have committed war crimes, and that the RSF has committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.) In early November, the RSF and its allies reportedly killed at least 800 people in an attack on just one town—Ardamata in West Darfur province.

A senior U.N. official in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, wasn’t exaggerating when she said, “What is happening is verging on pure evil.” A group of U.N. experts called “on both parties to the conflict to end violations of humanitarian and human rights law,” but they expressed “specific concern” with the RSF’s “brutal and widespread use of rape and other forms of sexual violence.”

Mariam Hassam, 20, takes a shower using water from a hole in the dry valley on Sept. 20, 2023 in Metche, Chad. More than 420,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to neighboring Chad.

Abdulmonam Eassa—Getty Images

An aerial view of makeshift shelters of Sudanese, who fled the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, in Adre, Chad, July 20, 2023. 

Zohra Bensemra—Reuters

Sudan is a large country, strategically located, and its speedy disintegration is already having spillover effects throughout the Horn of Africa, Sahel, and Red Sea regions. Major refugee flows into neighboring countries such as Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia are ongoing, while the fighting in Darfur is causing fallout across the border in Chad.

Peace talks that concluded last month in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia—convened by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and a bloc of East African nations—might have seemed like a positive step toward peace. But it has mostly provided the warring parties with cover for further violence as the U.N. remains gridlocked. The Security Council has not passed a substantive resolution on Sudan since the war began.

Meanwhile, regional powers have picked sides. Egypt, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia support the SAF while the UAE, a U.N. Security Council member, backs the RSF in seeming violation of the body’s own arms embargo on Darfur, first enacted in 2004 and just renewed (with a yes vote from the UAE) in March 2023. (The UAE has denied supplying weapons or ammunition to the RSF.)

Awar is sent to hospital in an ambulance from Gongoi IDP camp where she had twins the previous night. She is feeling very weak and unwell and has lost a lot of blood and is still bleeding. August, 2023. 

Sean Sutton—Panos Pictures/Redux

In the wake of last month’s failed peace talks in Jeddah, the international community needs to step in and prioritize genuine peace talks, a durable ceasefire, increased humanitarian access, and a surge of resources for aid and protection efforts. The U.N.’s Sudan response plan requires $2.6 billion; it is about a third funded.

We, like so many Sudanese, have been forced to flee our country, leaving behind the land and people that we love. The Khartoum that we called home and know is gone. Bodies are piling up in the streets, in some cases eaten by stray dogs. Those who are too sick or weak to move await death as heavy shelling surrounds them.

But our nation is worth saving. There are everyday Sudanese at the forefront of the humanitarian response working to keep communities safe and weaving back the social fabric that this war has torn asunder. We, and they, need the world to join the struggle to end this war before it is too late.

View original: https://time.com/6342732/sudan-burhan-hemedti-descent-warlordism/

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End To Killing Of Children, UN Committee Urges

THERE are 468 million children worldwide living in armed conflict zones, according to Save the Children’s research, accounting for about 20% of the world’s 2.4 billion children population, based on UNICEF’s statistics. One out of every five children worldwide are living within armed conflict zones.

Read more from Scoop Media

Press Release: UN Treaty Bodies
Dated Tuesday, 21 November 2023, 1:30 am - here is a copy in full:

End To Killing Of Children In Armed Conflict, UN Committee Urges

World’s Children Day
20 November 2023

GENEVA (20 November 2023) – With one out of every five children worldwide living within armed conflict zones, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child marks World Children’s Day in a sombre mood and calls for ceasefires and a return to basics of humanitarian law to safeguard all children. The Committee today issued the following statement:

“World Children’s Day has generally been regarded as a day to celebrate the gains made since the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989. Thirty-four years later today, it, however, has become a day for mourning for the many children who have recently died in armed conflict. 

More than 4,600 children have been killed in Gaza in only five weeks. This war has claimed the lives of more children in a shorter time and with a level of brutality that we have not witnessed in recent decades.

The Committee has previously urged for a ceasefire. Unfortunately, the UN Security Council has not put its weight behind that call. While the 15 November 2023 resolution of the Security Council calling for humanitarian pauses and corridors is a positive step by the international community, it does not end the war that is waging on children – it simply makes it possible for children to be saved from being killed on some days, but not on other days.

There are 468 million children worldwide living in armed conflict zones, according to Save the Children’s research, accounting for about 20% of the world’s 2.4 billion children population, based on UNICEF’s statistics.

On World Children's Day, the Committee also wants to underscore that while the armed conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is at the forefront of our minds, we remain acutely concerned that thousands of children are dying in armed conflict in many parts of the world, including in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Myanmar, Haiti, Sudan, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. Verified figures show that in 2022, the global figure of children killed or maimed was 8,630. Of deep concern is the fact that up to 4,000 children were denied humanitarian access last year. 

Given the current situation in Gaza, the number of child victims of these grave human rights violations is rising exponentially.

The plight of girls affected by armed conflict is also at a crisis point. In Sudan and Haiti, there are verified reports of abduction and rape of girls, and concerns have been raised by the Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children about the deterioration in access to humanitarian services is driving girls towards being recruited by armed groups.

Children of so-called ‘foreign fighters’ are a further area of concern. The Committee has recommended in three complaints under its communications procedure that children in the camps in Northeast Syria should be repatriated. 

While some States have acted to return children and their mothers, an estimated 31,000 children are still living in abysmal conditions in the camps. The Committee also remains very concerned about boys who are being separated from their mothers when they reach early adolescence, as well as several hundred boys who are in prison.

The Committee recognises World Children’s Day in a sombre mood. In the face of wars affecting children around the globe, we call again for ceasefires, for a return to the basics of humanitarian law, and for thorough investigations by competent authorities of all grave violations against children in the context of armed conflict.”

View original: https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO2311/S00140/end-to-killing-of-children-in-armed-conflict-un-committee-urges.htm

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100 returnees in Unity State head back to transit camps near South Sudan-Sudan border citing hunger

Report from Radio Tamazuj
By Radio Tamazuj
Dated Thursday, 16 November 2023 - here is a copy in full:

100 returnees in Unity State flee back to Sudan citing hunger

Returnees set up makeshift shelters in Renk after fleeing war in Sudan. (Reuters photo)

A hundred South Sudanese who recently returned from Sudan to escape violence are now returning to Sudan due to a worsening humanitarian crisis and hunger in Unity State.

Residents in Unity State reported to Radio Tamazuj that the returnees are heading back to Renk and Thuongor transit camps near the South Sudan-Sudan border and the road leading to the Unity oilfield.

The camp chairman at the UN-run Protection of Civilians site in Bentiu, John Tot Riak, confirmed that some of the returnees had left for Sudan due to the harsh conditions in the camp and state.

“I am aware of the returnees who came to us. When they got us here suffering, they said they could not add to the suffering,” he said. “Some of them have gone back and some are planning to follow those who left.”

The returnees who fled the conflict in Sudan have endured over six months without food aid in Unity State, prompting their decision to leave the Bentiu IDP camp for a country at war.

Nyakume Stephen, a resident of the Bentiu IDP camp, said that the returnees explained that death is the same everywhere.

“They (returnees) said death cannot be divided into two which is why they go back. And we know that death cannot be divided into two,” he stated. “I accommodated sixty returnees. I gave them two rooms which I built because they had no relatives in the block. They left in October. The situation forced them.”

Compounding the problem, Bentiu IDP residents have faced a food aid suspension since July by the World Food Programme (WFP) due to a lack of funding from donors.

According to Tom Ruai, many returnees have gone back to Sudan through Renk County in Upper Nile State and the Unity Oilfield road of Unity State.

“When fighting happened in Khartoum, many people returned home. Now they are being forced by hunger to all go back,” he recounted. “Some of them are dying along the way while footing. Some are using Manga to go back to Renk and Thuongor. Some have gone back to Khartoum. What is facing them is hunger.”

Most returnees in Unity State have voiced concerns about a lack of food, health facilities, clean drinking water, access to education, and a measles outbreak since arriving in the area.

View original: https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/100-returnees-in-unity-state-flee-back-to-sudan-citing-hunger

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