(Renk) When fighting broke out in mid-April in Sudan, Rosa Yusif Elias took to the road, on foot, with her seven children, towards her native country, South Sudan, hoping to find safety there.
The family left the violence behind but have now been stranded for weeks just across the border in an isolated and unsanitary camp, overwhelmed by the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of people, some 50 kilometers from the South Sudanese town of Renk.
“This place is full of flies and snakes, and the food is not good”, explains Rosa Yusif Elias: “Our children […], some contracted diarrhea. In recent days, three children have died in this camp,” she adds.
“We are suffering, children are dying,” agrees another refugee, Santuke Danga: “We are queuing up to get gruel for the children; at the water point, people are fighting; (there is) no security and sometimes hyenas come. »
This sudden and massive influx of refugees has weakened an already very precarious situation in South Sudan, where politico-ethnic violence, famine and natural disasters continue to undermine the country ravaged by a civil war between 2013 and 2018.
In normal times, NGOs struggle to meet the basic needs of the inhabitants in a country where two-thirds of the population depends on humanitarian aid.
Since fighting began in neighboring Sudan nearly two months ago, more than 100,000 people have fled to South Sudan, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).
Dehydration and malnutrition
In the camp located near Renk, some arrive on donkeys, too weak to walk. The children are among the hardest hit, dehydrated and malnourished after a harrowing journey of hundreds of kilometers through the semi-arid lands of southern Sudan.
In the long queue in front of a dispensary, Kony Puk waits with her one-and-a-half-year-old daughter to see a doctor. She suffers from severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition.
“She felt ill and there was no medicine in Khartoum because of the fighting”, explains this father of two children: “It took us two weeks to get here and on the way, she only took water and milk from his mother. »
According to Asunta Agok, who works for UNHCR, several people died shortly after their arrival, including a baby. “The child had a devastating illness and there was no medical team on the ground to provide assistance,” she says.
The World Food Program (WFP) and other humanitarian organizations operating in the camp warn that the situation could get worse.
“This place does not have the capacity to welcome and help these people”, says Leonidace Rugemalila, head of the WFP in Renk: “And with the rainy season (which extends from April to November, editor’s note) , diseases such as cholera can be expected […]. And cases of malnutrition could increase. »
no road
Many would like to leave the camp, but Renk is in a remote area of northeastern South Sudan that is insecure and affected by flooding.
“We had heard that if we arrived here, we would be helped to return home. But now we are stuck,” sighs Christina Nyaluak Juaj, who protects her six children from the scorching sun with the only sheet she owns.
Some would like to reach the capital Juba, an 800 kilometer journey without public transport, through swamps and wilderness, exposed to armed attacks, on dirt roads that could be impassable with the rainy season.
“There is no road from Renk to other parts of the country, so it has to be done mainly by river or air transport, which is very expensive”, underlines Leonidace Rugemalila.
The wait is all the more unsustainable as commodity prices have exploded in the markets around Renk.
More than 800,000 South Sudanese lived in Sudan when the conflict broke out, mostly refugees displaced by decades of fighting for independence, finally won in 2011, and then by the bloody civil war that followed between 2013 and 2018 .
The politico-ethnic violence from which they fled has not ceased and the country remains marked by four consecutive years of record floods.
“Many communities in South Sudan are already permanently displaced by climate change and new arrivals may return without being able to recognize or even access the areas they left,” UNHCR said in a June 7 statement.
Stephen Tuk, 32, left Sudan knowing that he would certainly not be able to reach his homeland in Bentiu, a northern town completely cut off from the world by floods. But for him, it didn’t matter: “I didn’t want to die in a place that wasn’t my home”.