South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long and bloody civil war. Only two years after that South Sudan fell into another long and bloody civil war that started in 2013. In 2016 it was estimated that 50,000 people had been killed and 1.6 million displaced. In 2017 the number of displaced people increased to 2.3 million, and today it’s believed that over 4 million people have been displaced and 200,000 people have died.
Why did this war start and who is fighting in it?
This civil war is fought between government forces led by President Salva Kiir against the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement In Opposition (SPLM-IO) which is led by Riek Machar who used to be Kiir’s vice president. Kiir was elected as South Sudan’s first president after independence and Machar was chosen as vice president. However, when Kiir started consolidating power and dismissing many government officials that supported Machar, Machar stated that he would run in opposition to Kiir in 2013 which led to his dismissal.
While this conflict is a struggle for power it is also an ethnic struggle between two groups, the Dinka and the Nuer. Kiir is a member of the Dinka group and Machar is a part of the Nuer ethnic group. In 2015 the African Union stated that it had reasons to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed by both sides, and the UN has warned that the violence has the “potential for genocide”. Unfortunately, the UN Human Rights Commission on South Sudan noted in 2016 that there was “already a steady process of ethnic cleansing underway ..” but ethnic cleansing is not linked to any international convention or legal definition and there hasn’t been any investigation into the crime of genocide in South Sudan.
Who is fleeing and where are they going?
Children make up 63% of the people fleeing from South Sudan, they are often survivors of violent attacks, sexual assault, and have been separated from their parents or families. Most people are going to Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Sisters Joann and Nacy lost their parents to HIV and were living with their grandmother when the civil war reached their village, they had to run for their lives. “They were looting houses and raping young girls,” said Joann. The sisters knew they had to get away from the soldiers, but their grandmother was too weak to travel and the sisters were forced to set out on their own. Both sisters eventually made it to a refugee camp in Uganda, where there is no war but life is still difficult due to a lack of supplies.
Joann and Nacy managed to avoid any encounters with any militia. Not everyone was that lucky. Grace is 16, and living in a refugee camp in Uganda. On the way to Uganda, her mother was taken and her older brother was shot, and she was raped. Now she is pregnant with her assailant’s child.
What is a forgotten generation?
In 2018 Henrietta H. Fore, UNICEF’s executive director, warned that “… we are going to lose this generation and that would be tragic for South Sudan because a country cannot build itself without this next generation of young people.”
In camps, both in Sudan and Uganda, kids are either out of school or in schools that have limited resources. Anna and Grace, are living in a refugee camp in South Sudan and talk a lot about their dreams of being able to go back to school. There is a school near the camp in a local town that was made for 300 students. Now that refugees attend, there is more than 1,000 students.
Because the school is so crowded many parents are choosing to not send their kids to school, a decision that Anna does not approve of. “Education is very important … I can be a minister, a doctor or a teacher if I’m educated”. Anna so strongly believes in education that she joined an advocacy group for parents to send their kids to school.
Her older sister Grace is not so lucky, since there is no high school nearby Grace can’t continue her education. She wants to be a doctor or a chemist so she volunteers in the camp’s medical tent.
These kids are South Sudan’s next-generation, with at least 500,000 kids affected by the conflict it will be even harder for the country to rebuild when the conflict finally ends.
What’s happening now?
The international community has pushed for peace agreements every year since the conflict started. The most progress was made in 2018 where negotiations finally started. There were multiple ceasefires that were made and broken by both sides. Eventually in September of 2018 Kiir signed a peace deal with Machar that formally ended the five-year civil war. There has been trouble and violence since this deal was signed and today South Sudan continues to import weapons and disarmament campaigns are often met with violence.
Bibliography
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“Harrowing Stories of Refugees Fleeing South Sudan’s Civil War.” South Sudan’s Bloody War , ITV News , 4 Aug. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3RIeSU-Og.
“Kids in Camps .” Real Stories , 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EZqw7dtdA.
Morgan, Al Jazeera Hiba. “UN: ‘Ethnic Cleansing under Way’ in South Sudan.” South Sudan | Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 1 Dec. 2016, www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/01/un-ethnic-cleansing-under-way-in-south-sudan/?xif=.
Noel, Katherine, and Alex De Waal . “Understanding the Roots of Conflict in South Sudan.” Council on Foreign Relations, 14 Sept. 2016, www.cfr.org/interview/understanding-roots-conflict-south-sudan#:~:text=Five%20years%20after%20gaining%20independence,plotting%20a%20coup%20d’%C3%A9tat.
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O’Grady, Siobhán. “South Sudan’s Leaders Made War — and Many Millions of Dollars.” Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, 12 Sept. 2016, foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/12/south-sudans-leaders-made-war-and-many-millions-of-dollars/.
Samms, Andrew. “The South Sudanese Civil War (2013- ).” Welcome to Blackpast •, Blackpast , 30 May 2020, www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/south-sudanese-civil-war-2013/.
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Writer , Staff. “A Major Step Toward Ending South Sudan’s Civil War.” Crisis Group, 25 Feb. 2020, www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan/major-step-toward-ending-south-sudans-civil-war.
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I’m glad that you brought attention to this ongoing crisis, as many of us forget the reality and extent of it. I very much like that you included the personal narratives of young survivors. I would be curious to know what the reaction of nations like Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been and what effect the South Sudanese conflict has had on these receiving countries.
Hey Caitlin, thanks for the interesting post! I am regrettably one of those people who has not been paying enough attention to this crisis and now better understand what’s going on. The fact that 63% of those fleeing the country are children is staggering because if they never return or don’t get the necessary skills to keep the country running, South Sudan will be in a difficult spot. Do you think this conflict has an end in sight, or is it going to go on for the foreseeable future?
Hey Nick, thanks for reading! I, unfortunately, think this conflict will continue for a while despite peace terms being negotiated already. In my opinion, this is because the peace terms don’t change anything about the government structure enough for real change to happen. Kiir is still President and Machar has been reinstituted as VP in theory. This doesn’t do anything to fix what led this conflict to happen in the first place, and I think until South Sudan gets new leadership this conflict will continue. Even then, there are so many rebel groups that it’s going to take a long time for South Sudan to not be in a place of internal conflict.
Hi Cat, thank you for researching and bringing more of this horrific conflict to light, its important that we continue to pay attention to it and understand how best to assist those it has affected. Do you think that many of the ‘lost generation’ will return to their native homeland or will they continue to pursue a life outside of a place they no longer have family in? Do you think that they will distance themselves from national identity and choose to associate themselves with a larger group of other lost generation members in its place?
With the mention national identity, I thought about a research paper I am writing for another class about Palestinian identity in Israel and despite denationalization being disallowed by the United Nations, the population struggles for many basic rights. I think that people, reagrdless of their homeland, need a sense of security and belonging in order to identify with that nation. For populations trying to escape violence and who are looking for better opportunities, their loyalty to their homeland may be lost, at least until they are able to safely return and find opportunity that has been missing for so long. Meanwhile, they may define themselves based on the life they must live elsewhere and thus show resolve in building for their future there.
This is very relevant today, as it happens so many times that two countries fight and peaceful civilians are stuck in the middle. The UN can only intervene so much, as one side could see the other as gaining support, which would only further escalate things. It is unfortunate to see more than a million people displaced, and the worst is the children, “the future”, who can not receive an education to change the problem.
Do children cross the borders alone? Do they become refugees when they are already separated from their parents or parents have disappeared? or are these family strategies to keep children safe by sending them away as refugees? Are they leaving South Sudan with their mothers while fathers stay? I’m wondering why 63% of refugees from South Sudan are children.
Of those four million who have been displaced, how many have become refugees–that is, crossed borders and registered as refugees? and what proportion are IDPs?
Your post includes both internally displaced South Sudanese voices and refugee voices. To what extent are their conditions and challenges the same? To what extent do they differ? My guess: children who become refugees are far more “lost to the nation” than are children who are IDPs. There’s a high likelihood that refugees will never return.