Displaced struggle as large areas remain inaccessible in Jonglei
PIBOR, 28 August 2013 (IRIN) - Tens of thousands of displaced people are still struggling to find food, water and access to shelter as they hide in the bush in South Sudan’s Jonglei State following clashes there in July.
While some have dared to return to the heavily militarized town of Pibor to look for food, others have remained in the bush where they are forced to survive on wild fruit and leaves.
In Pibor town - where aid agencies suspended food distributions on 18 August (after assisting 21,000 people there) because of what the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called “insecurity and abuses”, around 1,000 people are waiting for aid to resume, according to local authorities.
The agencies are reviewing “operational constraints including guarantees of safety for both civilians receiving assistance and for the aid workers,” OCHA said in a bulletin.
Meanwhile, in the Jonglei town of Gumuruk, where some 10,000 people in need were registered earlier in August, food distributions were set to get off the ground on 29 August.
In Pibor, “people are suffering,” said Moses Ajak, a representative in the commissioner’s office.
Outside his window people who have already been hiding in the bush for weeks and then walked for days - some up to a week - to register for the food packages are waiting in the yard, many without protection from the heavy rain.
“During the night we host as many as we can in the commissioner’s office. Others are forced to sleep outside,” Moses Ajak said.
Over 100,000 displaced
More than 100,000 people are still displaced or in other ways affected by the violence that broke out in July between the Lou Nuer and Murle communities, and following clashes between the government and a rebel group led by David Yau Yau.
Many of them are out of reach of humanitarian support. In Pibor town, people who had already left their villages to come here to look for food were either left in town among the soldiers or forced to return home empty-handed.
“I came to Pibor when I heard they were handing out food,” said Thalano Kolen who walked from the village of Lilot with her six remaining children. The other two, a boy and a small girl, were killed when groups of what Thalano believes was Lou Nuer youth attacked the village.
“We have been living in the bush without food or shelter for weeks. I gave the children some wild fruits but when they got diarrhoea I decided to come here. I do not feel safe staying in town with the soldiers but I cannot walk back to the village without food,” Thalano said.
Many of the displaced are women and children. The men are hiding in the bush, afraid to come into town because of the military presence, the women explained.
Others, like Thalano Kolen’s husband, were killed in the fighting.
They are left to fend for themselves in a region that remains cut off due to insecurity and heavy rains.
The rainy season, which turns roads, villages, market areas and cattle camps into mud, restricts the movement and reach of aid agencies. Only 10 percent of Jonglei is accessible by road during the rains.
Limited air assets and lack of useable airstrips make it difficult to reach the neediest, especially with heavy foodstuffs.
“People need plastic sheeting to build their `tukuls’ [huts]. They also need medical treatment, but most of all they need food,” said James Nyikcho, who works with a local NGO in Pibor town.
In July aid agencies launched relief operations in the villages of Dorein and Labrab and Pibor town, with assistance under way for up to 30,000 people by the end of the month in Pibor County.
Food drops started in the village of Gumuruk, where medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières runs the only healthcare station in Pibor County since the organization was forced to close down its clinic in Pibor due to insecurity.
In Pibor town local authorities and aid workers stressed the need for aid to resume.
“When two women were killed by SPLA [Sudanese People’s Liberation Army] soldiers and one woman was raped coming to town, all NGOs left. I heard they might return at the beginning of September but no one knows for sure,” said Moses Ajak at the commissioner’s office.
In the meantime food ready to be distributed remains locked up in the World Food Programme’s hangar just outside town.
Hopes for peace
In late July, Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, who chairs the recently-established National Reconciliation Commission, called for the full implementation of a peace agreement signed in May 2012 by the paramount chiefs of all six communities in Jonglei State.
In a statement, Deng said this agreement had set a “peace from the roots” process in motion but that this was subsequently derailed by Yau Yau, whose “rebellion against the central government is not part of the same dynamic as the conflict between communities” but has nonetheless drawn these communities back into conflict and rearmament.
“We believe that the 2012 Jonglei peace agreement is still a viable option,” said the archbishop, who went on to urge Yau Yau to accept an amnesty offered by President Salva Kiir.
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Copyright © IRIN 2013
This material comes to you via IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations or its Member States.
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