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south sudan
Other Places in the World Where Injustice, Poverty, and Violence Spark Suffering
Ask a Sudanese or a Syrian or an Egyptian or an Afghan what it’s like to live under autocracy. Then ask marginalized Americans what it’s like to live on the outskirts of democracy.
Oct 15, 2023
Various versions of the aphorism “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography” have been making the rounds ever since the rise of U.S. imperialism in the late 1800s. The quip (which, despite legend, appears not to be attributable to Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, or any other famous person) has proven all too accurate when the war in question directly involves American troops. When, however, non-U.S. combatants and civilians suffer and die from conflicts relatively unrelated to Washington’s “strategic interests,” our media outlets tend to avert their eyes, aid agencies get stingy, and Americans learn no geography whatsoever. Oh, and given this country’s power and position on this planet, millions suffer the consequences of that neglect.
Terror Days in Khartoum
Let’s start with Sudan. A civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Force (RSF) is now dragging into its seventh month with no end in sight. Since the conflict erupted, Washington has issued only a few token calls for the fighting there to end, while providing insufficient aid to desperate millions of Sudanese. The assistance that did go out has proven microscopic compared to the vast quantities of humanitarian, economic, and military aid our government has poured into similarly war-torn Ukraine.
In the first five months of brutal fighting in Sudan, 5,000 civilian deaths and injuries to at least 12,000 more were reported — and those were both considered significant underestimates. Meanwhile, more than a million people have fled that country, while a staggering 7.1 million have been displaced in their own land. According to the International Office of Migration, that represents “the highest [number] of any internally displaced population in the world, including Syria, Ukraine, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Human Rights Watch reports that “over 20 million people, 42% of Sudan’s population, face acute food insecurity and 6 million are just a step away from famine.”
Try to take that in for a moment and wonder, while you’re at it, why you’ve heard so desperately little (or nothing at all!) about such an immense human tragedy. Worse yet, the Sudanese people are hardly the only ones being treated shabbily by Uncle Sam and other governments of the rich North while suffering deadly deprivation. Sudan is, in fact, at the center of a region stretching from the Middle East deep into Africa in which countries suffering some of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies are largely being ignored by the Global North.
Given the near vacuum of news on the Sudan conflict in our media, we contacted Hadeel Mohamed, an educator we know who fled Sudan for neighboring Egypt, but is still in frequent contact with her neighbors who stayed behind in the capital city, Khartoum. We asked her for an update on what people still living there were telling her they were enduring after six months of unending civil war.
Every house in their neighborhood, she’s heard, has been looted by combatants. In the process, her friends and neighbors say that they’ve experienced “terror days when their houses were being invaded or even re-invaded to see if there’s anything left.”
“When it starts to get dark outside,” she told us, “that’s scariest, because you never know who’s going to come in and attack.” If female household members are there, what grim fates are they likely to suffer? And she adds, “If you have males in the house, are they going to be abducted and what’s going to happen to them?”
We asked whether atrocities were being committed by both the Sudanese Army and the RSF? “Yeah, both sides,” she responded. “Listen, I’m not validating any side, but when you’re in war, you really don’t know who’s coming at you or who’s a threat to you. So, everyone is seen as a threat.” And that, she adds, leads the combatants to act violently toward the civilians who’ve stayed behind.
Food is especially scarce in Khartoum, because travel in and out of the city is so dangerous for the usual suppliers and, as Hadeel points out, “Most of the stores have been looted, but in certain areas, some bread and other food is available for a few hours per day per week. There’s no fixed schedule, though.” Worse yet, wherever there’s active fighting, electricity and water supplies are normally cut off. “Some people can have electricity for weeks, while others will not have it for weeks.” Some engineers have bravely remained in Khartoum trying to keep power and water supplies flowing, but it’s often a hopeless task.
“People are on such unstable ground,” Hadeel concludes. “They really don’t know when their next food supplies are going to come in or when they’re going to be able to refill their water.” They have to watch for opportunities to slip outside in relative safety to “find something to keep them and their neighbors going.”
And what exactly has been Washington’s response to this ongoing horror? Well, the State Department issued a toothless admonishment that the army and RSF “must comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, including obligations related to the protection of civilians.” And that was about it, other than ineffective sanctions applied to the leader of the RSF. Meanwhile, international efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting have collapsed, and humanitarian aid efforts have been hopelessly bogged down. Anyway, who has time for Sudan when arming and backing the Ukrainians has the attention of everyone who matters in the United States?
“Severe, Extreme, or Catastrophic Conditions”
Mind you, that paucity of interest is anything but unique to the crisis in Sudan. For example, U.N. World Food Program (WFP) Director Cindy McCain recently told ABC’s This Week that there isn’t enough food-assistance money for desperate Afghanistan, filled with starving people, to “even get through October.” In addition, the WFP has had to cut food aid to other countries in desperate need, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Jordan, Palestine, South Sudan, Somalia, and Syria. As for explaining that shortfall, McCain was blunt, blaming the rush of rich nations of the Global North to support Ukraine which, she says, “has sucked the oxygen out of the room.”
Typically, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that its famine-prevention program for war-ravaged Yemen is now receiving just 30% of the funds it needs, putting millions of Yemenis at risk. OCHA points to the peril facing Fatima, a 60-year-old woman living in the village of Al-Juranah. The program supplies her family with wheat, peas, and oil, but delivery is sporadic, a reality about which Fatima is all too matter-of-fact. “We receive a sack of wheat,” she says, “and sometimes we get only half a sack. They also give us roasted peas and oil. If this support stops, we will starve to death.” And sadly enough, that support is now anything but guaranteed.
Two years after a ceasefire in that brutal civil war fed by Saudi Arabia (with U.S. support), a conflict that received only the scantiest media coverage in this country, more than half of Yemenis — 17 million people — are food insecure. U.N. forecasters predict that without massive intervention, a quarter of those people will experience “acute food insecurity” by year’s end, with three-quarters of them reaching “crisis levels of hunger.” Such massive intervention is decidedly not in the cards, however, and the continuing neglect is having horrific consequences. National Public Radio’s Fatma Tanis did, in fact, report on this from a Yemeni hospital in August:
“We head next to the intensive care unit for newborns, often born with complications because of malnutrition. As we enter, a nurse pulls a sheet over a baby who just died. The parents aren’t here. Often, families use all their resources to bring their child to the hospital but can’t afford to return again. So the hospital has to take care of burials too, without them.”
The people of Syria are similarly striving to recover from the civil war that erupted in 2011 and was finally put on hold with a 2020 ceasefire, but only after a full decade of ferocious warfare and terrible suffering. Like the Sudanese and Yemenis, they remain largely unnoticed and uncovered these days in the American media. In addition to extreme water shortages, a catastrophic 55% of Syrians are officially in the crisis phase of acute food insecurity. In late 2022, OCHA reported that “severe, extreme, or catastrophic conditions” were affecting 69% — yes, you read that right! — of the country’s population. Furthermore,
“Basic services and other critical infrastructure are on the brink of collapse… Over 58 percent of households interviewed reported accessing only between three to eight hours of electricity per day, while almost seven million people only had access to their primary water source between two and seven days per month in June.”
Is the world paying attention? In one respect, Syria is more fortunate than Sudan or Yemen, enjoying its very own annual conference of donor nations. At this June’s conference, hosted by the European Union, donors pledged an increase in total aid, but the amount still fell $800 million short of what the U.N. was seeking for that country. Worse yet, just before the conference kicked off, the World Food Program announced that it would cut food aid to almost half of Syria’s 5.5 million current recipients just when they’re most in need.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, another country in deep distress, finds itself in the global spotlight, but not for the suffering its people are experiencing. Its huge deposits of cobalt, copper, and other mineral elements essential to future renewable-energy economies have finally brought it some attention. However, the Global North, transfixed by those priceless minerals, has remained remarkably blind to the wave of human misery now sweeping the Congo.
Last month, Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, just back from a trip there, toldDemocracy Now, “It’s the worst hunger catastrophe on Earth. Nowhere else in the world is there more than 25 million people experiencing violence, hunger, disease, neglect. And nowhere in the world is there such a small international response to help, to aid, to end all of this suffering.”
As in Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, hunger and war have gone hand-in-hand in the Congo. Today, Egelend said, an almost unbelievable 150 or so armed groups vie for power in the cobalt-rich eastern part of the country. In the early 2000s, cobalt was valued for its role in mobile phones and laptops. The stakes are far higher now, with vastly larger quantities required to produce the lithium-ion batteries essential to the development of sprawling new power grids and a vast global fleet of electric vehicles.
Collateral damage radiating from the Congo’s ongoing violence includes a hunger crisis, an epidemic of sexual assault by combatants on tens of thousands of civilian women, and so much more. The U.N. sought $2.3 billion in humanitarian assistance for the Congo in 2023. It has, however, only received a measly one-third of that sum, enough to help just one of every 18 people now in desperate need.
On Democracy Now!, Egeland put his finger on the terrible calculations of global economics and diplomacy: “Congo is not ignored by those who want to extract the riches of that place. It is ignored by the rest of the world… As humanity, we’re really, really failing Congo now, because it’s not Ukraine, it’s not the Middle East.”
As a refugee from Sudan, Hadeel Mohamed worries every day about these kinds of terrible calculations being made in the North. As she puts it,
“This war has really opened our eyes to a lot of things. Although we saw the news of what’s happening in Yemen and Syria, and all these countries where wars erupted, we never really understood the depth of it. A worry of ours is that what’s happening to Syrian refugees is going to happen to Sudanese refugees… where your prospects are not going to mean anything… where you’re limited in your work transactions, you’re limited in your educational abilities.”
Because organizations like the U.N. and the International Red Cross were activated “quite late” in Sudan, she points out, some who fled the country, especially youth, “started forming groups to help people cross borders to get out, to find jobs, and to raise funds for food and water aid for those still in Sudan.” Hadeel herself is involved in such efforts. “But progress is a bit slow, because we’re still trying to rebuild our own lives in parallel.”
“If the war is not contained in Khartoum,” she adds, “the chances of it spreading are very high and we’ve seen a lot of spreading recently, whether it’s in Port Sudan or Madani or surrounding cities.” Violence has been raging for months in the Darfur region of western Sudan as well. The conflict could also be significantly prolonged by the desire of both sides to control northeastern Sudan’s vast gold deposits, which play a role analogous to that of cobalt in the Congo.
With no relief in sight, says Hadeel, the people of Khartoum, understand that lacking true humanitarian aid, “you really come back to more of community-based aid. With our limited resources, with our limited abilities, we still find people rising up to take care of each other.” Nevertheless, for refugees, “there are only two possible outcomes here: either you go back and fight for your country and potentially die or you go on living and establishing yourself outside of Sudan.”
Meanwhile, on the Outskirts of Democracy…
Tyranny, civil war, systemic breakdown — it can’t happen here, right? Or can it? We privileged folk in the United States may still think we live in a democracy, but so many of us don’t. In truth, the 140 million poor and low-wage folks, Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous, along with about one-third of White people, live on the outskirts of our “democracy.” Like the people of Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, they dream of being in a country where there’s equality and justice, and where democracy, while not complete, is at least not dying.
The United States never was, and by the looks of it, now has little chance of becoming a truly pluralistic, multiracial democratic system. If we were, we’d be spending every free hour raising hell to make sure the possibility of democracy doesn’t die in next year’s election. The media are replete with dystopian scenarios of its end and the rise of Trumpistan. We’re scared shirtless about that, too, and it’s a gut punch to realize that, if we had a truly functioning democracy, there’d be no way it could be toppled by a single guy like Donald Trump.
Ask a Sudanese or a Syrian or an Egyptian or an Afghan what it’s like to live under autocracy. Then ask marginalized Americans what it’s like to live on the outskirts of democracy. For the latter, democracy is like Sudan’s gold and the Congo’s cobalt. There may be a lot of it, but very few get any.
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Raging Wars, Soaring Hunger Put Women and Girls in Crosshairs, Warns UN
"A toxic mix of crises--conflicts, climate, skyrocketing costs, and the ripple effects of the Ukraine war--are inflicting a devastating toll on the forcibly displaced. This is being felt across the world, but women and girls are particularly suffering."
Nov 25, 2022
Armed conflict, climate change, economic stressors, and humanitarian aid shortfalls are among the leading drivers of increased gender-based violence, the head of the United Nations' refugee agency said on Friday, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls.
"There is a shocking, pernicious cycle of hunger and insecurity, each exacerbating the other and fueling risks to women and girls."
"A toxic mix of crises--conflicts, climate, skyrocketing costs, and the ripple effects of the Ukraine war--are inflicting a devastating toll on the forcibly displaced. This is being felt across the world, but women and girls are particularly suffering," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi said in a statement.
The U.N. agency said that many refugees and internally displaced people can't meet their basic needs due to price inflation and diminished humanitarian aid caused by inadequate funding and supply chain disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and other disruptors like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
"With savings depleted, many are skipping meals, children are being sent to work instead of school and some may have no options but to beg or engage in the sale or exchange of sex to survive," said Grandi. "Too many are facing heightened risks of exploitation, trafficking, child marriage, and intimate partner violence."
\u201cTime to support and empower survivors.\nTime to spark a global conversation.\nTime to end violence against forcibly displaced women and girls, now!\n\n25 November is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, kicking off #16Days of Activism.\u201d— UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency (@UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency) 1669321383
As UNHCR details:
Among refugee populations in Algeria, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Niger, Tanzania, Uganda, Republic of the Congo, and Zambia, UNHCR has recorded serious nutrition concerns. These include acute malnutrition, stunting, and anemia. Across eastern and southern Africa, more than three-quarters of refugees have seen food rations cut and are unable to meet their basic needs. Inside Syria, 1.8 million people in displacement camps are severely food insecure, while nine in 10 Syrian refugees in Lebanon are unable to afford essential food and services.
Across the Americas, half of those forcibly displaced eat only two meals a day, with three-quarters reducing the quantity or quality of their food, according to UNHCR data. Major deteriorations in food security are projected in Yemen and the Sahel, and millions of internally displaced people in countries like Somalia and Afghanistan live in situations where 90% of the population are not consuming enough food.
"There is a shocking, pernicious cycle of hunger and insecurity, each exacerbating the other and fueling risks to women and girls, as harmful coping strategies are adopted across communities," the agency said.
\u201c"The situation facing women + girls in Afghanistan is exacerbated by a dire humanitarian + economic crisis, & restrictions on women\u2019s fundamental rights, including the freedom to move, work, seek education, & participate in public life" #16Days https://t.co/f1H8MhHuXo\u201d— UNHCR Afghanistan (@UNHCR Afghanistan) 1669370907
UNHCR highlighted the case of one South Sudanese refugee who in 2018 fled to Ethiopia's Gambella region, where she is forced to make dangerous forays for food because of a 50% reduction in monthly aid.
"In the camp, the food is not enough, so the only option for some women is to go to the forest to collect firewood to sell," the woman--who did not give her real name but called herself "Roda"--explained. "As women, we face a lot of risks by going to the forest. You need to walk for at least four hours to arrive at a very distant place where you can gather some sticks to bring home."
One day while going to get wood, Roda was attacked by a man. She was able to escape, but he followed her as she hurried back toward the refugee camp and she remains truamatized by the incident.
\u201cAround the world, forcibly displaced women & girls bear the brunt of deteriorating economies, rising prices & a lack of funding for humanitarian responses.\n\nRoda's story illustrates the risks refugee women face trying to make ends meet\ud83d\udc49https://t.co/nDTFJ8Jf5T\n#16DaysOfActivism\u201d— UNHCR Ethiopia (@UNHCR Ethiopia) 1669384638
"This is not an isolated occurrence," Roda stressed. "Many women have found themselves in these sorts of situations many times. If food was available at home, women would not need all these risks."
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What South Sudan Needs and Doesn't Need
South Sudan is the embodiment of so many ills that affect the world—colonialism, militarization, civil war, climate change, famine, and sexual violence.
Sep 29, 2022
By every conceivable measure, South Sudan is a nation in acute crisis. According to the World Bank, eighty percent of the South Sudanese population lives below the international poverty line, only one percent of people have access to electricity, and this month a UN Security Council delegation warned that another full-fledged civil war could break out at any moment.
What South Sudan has in abundance however are guns, violence, and US sanctions that are preventing the government from helping its people.
South Sudan is the embodiment of so many ills that affect the world--colonialism, militarization, civil war, climate change, famine, and sexual violence. By the mid-20th century, Sudan, encompassing what is now South Sudan and Sudan, began to fill up with firearms. By 1966, the country had received 30,000 G3 rifles from West Germany. By the late 1970s/mid-eighties, with the US-Soviet proxy wars in full swing, US arms transfers to Sudan were so large ($1.4 billion) that combined with arms transfers from other countries, the country was dubbed "Africa's arms dump."
What South Sudan has in abundance however are guns, violence, and US sanctions that are preventing the government from helping its people.
Global food security was among the priority issues discussed last week at the UN General Assembly in New York and its adjacent meetings. With the prediction that South Sudan will experience famine unless billions of dollars in aid are not obtained immediately, it is among the countries being considered for urgent action.
But, and this must be understood, the multiple crises facing South Sudan weren't of its own making.
Located along the Nile River the land that is now Sudan and South Sudan was once part of the ancient Christian Nubian kingdoms. It was renowned for its arts and culture, had its own written language, high literacy rates, and enjoyed high levels of gender equality.
Nubia eventually declined and fell to successive conquerors. Eventually, revolted against Egypt. However, only a decade later, Britain, which was the ruling power in Egypt, retook Sudan and placed it under joint Egyptian-British rule.
Sudan finally gained its independence in 1956. But, independence did not give way to peace. A civil war, which was already underway between the predominantly Muslim north and majority Christian south, would last until 72. During that time both sides were handing out arms to civilians, including children, for self-protection. By the end of a second civil war which lasted until 2005 and was largely a continuation of the first civil war, an estimated 1.9-3.2 million small arms circulating among the population, an arms culture that aspired to reach US levels, was well established.
In 2011, South Sudanese citizens voted by 99% to secede from the north and become their own country. While optimism was widespread and infectious, by the end of 2013, yet another civil war had broken out in the fledgling country after President Kiir accused Riek Machar, attempting a coup d'etat, leading to multiple sides fighting to rule the country.
By 2016, 6 million people in South Sudan were facing starvation. By 2017, the country's economy was in tatters and famine had been declared. By 2018, around 400,000 people had been killed and over 4 million displaced.
Despite the formation of a unity government in 2020, inter-community violence in South Sudan has increased. Human and civil rights are barely existent and the country has been declared one of the most dangerous places on earth for aid workers. A September 2022, joint human rights report documented 131 cases of rape and gang rape, including of girls as young as eight.
In a declared effort to "choke off war funds," the US has imposed sanctions on the South Sudanese oil industry.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch want an arms embargo, but US sanctions include South Sudan's oil industry.
Sanctions on South Sudan's gas industry prevent the country from using its natural resources (3.5 billion barrels of proven oil reserves) to reduce its extreme energy poverty. While one might think this is positive for the environment, without the ability to sell its gas, there are no funds for the development of renewable energy systems.
The African Energy Chamber has urged the US to remove its gas industry sanctions. The Crisis Group has stated that sanctions on South Sudan must be specific in their targets and timeframes, and have clear off-ramps.
Violent conflict isn't the only factor putting South Sudan in urgent danger of famine. Climate change has wreaked havoc on crops in the Horn of Africa and the war in Ukraine is compounding the global food security crisis. That said, as we rush to see that the necessary aid funds are raised to avoid all-out famine in time and pray for peace in the war-torn country, we must ensure that the US, and other Western countries, don't exacerbate the already dire situation and are held accountable for the role they played in creating the crisis.
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