In South Sudan, ‘the body of Christ is bleeding,’ bishop says

Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, privately met with representatives of the South Sudan Council of Churches (SSCC) and discussed how to promote peace in the country.

“We are here as an ecumenical body…we came as Christians to show that the body of Christ is bleeding,” Bishop Paride Tabani told Catholic News Agency (CNA). The people, he said, “[need] hope. They need healing, they are crying for peace, which cannot be brought by arms, but by love, by a sense of compassion, a spirit of love and forgiveness which God has shown to us, especially now. We would like that this Easter would also be a resurrection of people from their suffering.”

Members of the delegation included bishops and leaders of different Christian denominations in South Sudan, including Catholics, Anglicans and Presbyterians, among others. They updated Pope Francis on several joint initiatives of the council to provide humanitarian aid and prompt international leaders to intervene in finding a solution to the conflict.

“The Pope holds the suffering people of South Sudan in his heart,” said Council Secretary James Oyet Latansio following the Vatican meeting with Francis.

Members also touched on when a possible papal trip might take place. Francis had intended to visit the war-torn nation last year alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. However, the trip was postponed due to security concerns. According to the delegation, the pope expressed a strong desire to go, but gave no specific date.

“When he comes, we will welcome him,” said Oyet Latansio.

South Sudan’s conflict remains a humanitarian crisis, as the violence has caused starvation and the internal displacement of millions. Pope Francis has frequently called for peace in the world’s youngest nation, even declaring an international day of prayer and fasting for the country in February.

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UN threatens to consider arms embargo in South Sudan

The U.N. Security Council demanded an immediate end to fighting in South Sudan and threatened to consider an arms embargo and sanctions to prevent warring parties from violating a December cease-fire agreement.

A U.S.-drafted resolution, adopted unanimously, also expresses the council’s intention to consider sanctions “against those who take actions that undermine the peace, stability, and security of South Sudan.”

 The resolution extends the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping force in South Sudan until March 15, 2019 and maintains the 17,000 troop ceiling, including a regional protection force of up to 4,000 troops and 2,101 international police personnel.

There were high hopes that South Sudan would have peace and stability after its independence from neighboring Sudan in 2011. But the country plunged into ethnic violence in December 2013. A peace deal signed in August 2015 didn’t stop the fighting — and a cessation of hostilities agreement this past Dec. 24 was broken within hours.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and forced over 4 million to flee their homes, more than 1.8 million of them leaving the country in what has become the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/un-threatens-to-consider-arms-embargo-in-south-sudan/2018/03/15/415bbba0-2863-11e8-a227-fd2b009466bc_story.html?utm_term=.40bd0b85378f

The Key to Making Peace in Africa

In December 2013, competing factions of South Sudan’s ruling party plunged the country into a horrific civil war as they fought over the spoils of the world’s newest state. Now in its fourth year, the conflict has ravaged the economy, resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine, and displaced more than four million people, making this Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. And yet, amid all the suffering, a small clique of government elites and their cronies inside and outside South Sudan have benefited financially from the fighting, siphoning off the country’s oil wealth and storing the money in their private bank accounts and in luxury real estate in neighboring countries.

Remarkably, there is currently no coordinated strategy to disrupt the illicit siphoning of money by leaders and their foreign business partners. For leaders, giving up power almost certainly means losing access to their spoils, and it might even mean facing prosecution. This is the fatal flaw of peacemaking in Africa: those supporting mediation lack the leverage necessary to stop corrupt figures from using their forces to bomb, burn, imprison, silence, torture, starve, impoverish, kill, and rape to maintain or gain power.

Serious financial pressure with real bite is not only possible; it has proved effective in the past. As a start, sanctions must be levied against entire networks, not just individuals. Sanctions that target networks in this way are powerful tools for changing behavior and pressuring targeted individuals to come to the negotiating table. These “network sanctions” work because they affect not only the primary individual themselves but also those who are acting on their behalf and entities owned or controlled by the primary individual.

By sanctioning these individuals and entities at once, or in close succession, the individual’s network does not have enough time to absorb and adjust to the financial impact of being cut off from the U.S. financial system. Systemic sanctions would have a dramatic effect in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Congo, all places where interlocking kleptocratic networks involving political and military officials, allied businessmen, arms dealers, and international financial facilitators profit from mayhem.

For these sanctions to work, however, they need to be enforced.

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Famine Stalks South Sudan

In the catalog of horrors afflicting the world’s most hellish places, South Sudan can check about every bloodied box. More than four years of civil warfare has left tens of thousands dead, two million displaced, half the population at threat of starvation without aid and a trail of atrocities — genocide, child warriors, rape, castration, burned villages. And now, warns the United Nations, famine stalks the tortured land.

A recent report by the United Nations and the South Sudan government said 150,000 people could slip into famine this year. A formal famine declaration means people have already started to starve to death. But even with food aid, humanitarian workers warn, much of South Sudan could face severe hunger by May.

With so many conflicts around the globe, it is not surprising that those like South Sudan’s attract attention only when they rise to horrific levels. But South Sudan has the dubious distinction of being the world’s youngest state and the one most likely to fail.

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Hunger Woes Escalate in War-Torn South Sudan

At least two-thirds of the residents of oil-rich South Sudan are at risk of extreme hunger as the country tries to contain a devastating four-year conflict.

Some 5.3 million people, almost half of the population, struggled to find enough food in January, as aid agencies brace to help a record number of people in need this year, a report released by the United Nations and South Sudanese government said.

“The situation is extremely fragile, and we are close to seeing another famine,” said Serge Tissot, representative for the U.N.’s food and agricultural agency in South Sudan. “The projections are stark. If we ignore them, we’ll be faced with a growing tragedy.”

The prospect of famine comes after a dry season in which South Sudan in early 2017 declared famine in two counties with a total of some 100,000 residents. Weeks of robust aid deliveries helped avert the crisis, prompting aid agencies to lift the famine declaration in June.

The hunger is one aspect of a humanitarian emergency that has uprooted nearly five million people since the conflict began, creating the region’s worst refugee crisis since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, aid officials said.

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Pope declares day of fasting and prayer for South Sudan, DRC

Pope Francis has declared February 23 a day of fasting and prayer for crisis-ridden South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Pope appealed to those who are faithful to seek spiritual intervention by fasting and praying for peace. The Holy Father has also invited non-Catholic faithful to play a part in the search for peace in the two countries and around the world.

The Head of the global Anglican Church, Justin Welby, reiterated the Pope’s message and called for peace in the two nations. Welby also shared experiences of what he saw in previous trips to DRC and South Sudan.

“On my visits to both countries in recent years, it’s been impossible to describe the overwhelming scale of destruction. These conflicts are causing terrible loss of life. Huge numbers of people have been forced to flee their homes, which is tearing apart families and communities,” said Welby. “There are more than a million new internally displaced people. Famine is causing great suffering and danger. In South Sudan, up to 6 million people face starvation. Sexual violence and humiliation are being committed on the most atrocious scale in both countries.”

The conflict in South Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than two million, while the situation in DRC hinges on President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to leave power, despite calls from the opposition and human rights activist.

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Hundreds of child soldiers released in South Sudan

More than 300 child soldiers were released by armed groups in South Sudan, the second-largest such release since civil war began five years ago.

The “laying down of the guns” ceremony for 87 girls and 224 boys was the first step in a process that should see at least 700 child soldiers freed in the coming weeks, the United Nations said. The released children will be reunified with their families and given three months’ worth of food assistance and psychosocial support, along with the opportunity to go to school.

Over 19,000 children are thought to have been recruited by all sides. The U.N. has released almost 2,000 child soldiers so far. More than 10 percent of them have been under age 13.

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Child Abductions Rise as South Sudan War Incites Desperation

Child abductions among rival tribes have increased during South Sudan’s civil war as desperate people try to make a living amid widespread hunger and a devastated economy.

“Child abductions and trafficking in South Sudan is a real issue that requires an urgent response by the government,” said Edmund Yakani, executive director of the nonprofit Community Empowerment for Progress Organization.

Although inter-clan fighting, cattle raiding and abductions are deep-seated throughout this country, Yakani called it a particular problem in the town of Akobo, where many in the Murle tribe base “their livelihood” on selling children.

During a recent trip to Akobo, The Associated Press spoke with Murle tribesmen who acknowledged stealing and trafficking children for personal gain.

“The intention is to trade the children for cattle or use them personally,” said Thiro Akungurouth, a Murle youth leader who knows some of the abductors.

One child, no matter what his or her age, can sell for 20 cows, worth about $7,000, he said. Children who aren’t sold are kept by families without kids while girls are groomed for marriage, Akungurouth said.

Authorities in Akobo said 37 children have been seized in the surrounding areas since 2016, more than in the first three years of the war combined. It was not clear how many children have been abducted across the country during the civil war.

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-02-04/child-abductions-rise-amid-south-sudans-grinding-civil-war

UN Refugee Chief Calls for Peace in South Sudan

The ratio of South Sudanese refugees to local residents in the Ugandan Imvempi refugee settlement is now 1 to 4, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi visited the settlement and made an appeal to the warring factions in South Sudan.

“Please make peace. We can’t subject these people once again to exile, to suffering. We can’t always take for granted the generosity of the Ugandan people. Really, we must ensure that peace comes, because everybody told me this morning, as in the past, ‘If there’s peace I will go back, because this is where I belong. It’s my country.’ “

Uganda is currently hosting 1.3 million refugees, nearly all of them from South Sudan

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Why peace continues to elude South Sudan

Peacebuilding attempts in South Sudan appear to be on the brink of collapse, as violence and the conflict’s chaotic and ever-shifting fault lines already threaten to topple a three-week-old truce.

What began as a two-way fight has become fractured amidst rebel infighting, splinter groups and defections, making it harder to pin down a peace agreement with widespread credibility. The ceasefire signed in mid-December was supposed to put a stop to the fighting in what is one of the world’s most deadly ongoing conflicts. However, it seems to be wearing thin following a number of deadly clashes for which government forces and rebels blame each other.

The US, UK and Norway, which brokered the ceasefire, have called on all parties involved in the conflict to stop breaking the truce and threatened to impose sanctions on those violating the ceasefire. Although threats of sanctions appear to have had some weight in the past, defections and power struggles have plagued the peacebuilding effort for some time and shows no sign of abating today.

With the current leadership, it’s hard to build peace in South Sudan, says Meressa Dessu, a researcher and training coordinator at security think-tank ISS Africa, who has worked on the UN peace mission in the country. Dessu says the government signed the deal “for the sake of playing the game”.

This week the government declared the army’s chief of staff, General Paul Malong Awan, a rebel, accusing him of responsibility for several attacks last week. In a released statement, the general accused the security services and presidential aides of making a scapegoat of him in order to maintain tensions in South Sudan, their only means of retaining power.

Yet again, the intrigue could lead to more violence.

https://www.theworldweekly.com/index.php/reader/view/magazine/2018-01-11/why-peace-continues-to-escape-south-sudan/10450/