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Over 2 million children displaced by conflict, famine in South Sudan: UN

Monday, 08 May 2017 6:37 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 08 May 2017 8:17 AM ]

Refugees from South Sudan are seen waiting to receive treatment at the Bidibidi health center in the town of Yumbe in Uganda, April 14, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

The United Nations (UN) says more than two million children in South Sudan have been forced to leave their homes as a result of the conflict and famine in the country.

More than one million children have been forced to leave the country while another one million are internally displaced, according to the UN.

“No refugee crisis today worries me more than South Sudan,” Valentin Tapsoba, the Africa chief at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in a statement on Monday.

About three in every four children in South Sudan do not go to school, according to the UN. More than 1,000 children have also been killed in the ongoing civil war in the country, also according to the world body.

Civil war and famine in South Sudan have created Africa’s biggest refugee crisis in over a decade.

A mother sits by her child, who is suffering from cholera, in a tent converted into a temporary field hospital near the remote village of Dor, in Awerial County, in south-central Sudan, April 28, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

The war started three years ago when President Salva Kiir fired his deputy Riek Machar. Machar went on to lead rebel forces fighting Kiir. The civil war continues to this day and has divided the country along ethnic lines in the country of some 12 million people.

In early December last year, UN experts reported that “ethnic cleansing” was being carried out in several parts of South Sudan. Adama Dieng, the UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, had already warned of “a strong risk of violence escalating along ethnic lines, with the potential for genocide.”

To escape violence, many South Sudanese people have sought refuge in neighboring Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, and Ethiopia. These host countries are themselves struggling to provide enough food and resources for their own people.

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