Denis Dumo

South Sudan Nears Famine, Facing ‘Toughest Year’: Aid Groups

Almost two-thirds of the population will need food aid this year to stave off starvation and malnutrition.

A woman waits to be registered prior to a food distribution carried out by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Thonyor, Leer state in South Sudan on February 26. Credit: Reuters/Siegfried Modola/File Photo

Juba: South Sudan is close to another famine, aid officials said on Monday, after more than four years of civil war and failed ceasefires in the world’s youngest nation.

Almost two-thirds of the population will need food aid this year to stave off starvation and malnutrition as aid groups prepare for the “toughest year on record”, members of a working group including South Sudanese and UN officials said.

“The situation is extremely fragile, and we are close to seeing another famine. The projections are stark. If we ignore them, we’ll be faced with a growing tragedy,” said Serge Tissot, from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in South Sudan.

A total of 5.3 million people, 48% of the population, are already in “crisis” or “emergency” – stages three and four on a five point scale, according to a survey published by the working group.

The oil-rich east African nation has been torn apart by an ethnically charged civil war since late 2013, when troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and then-Vice President Riek Machar clashed.

Since then, more than 4 million people have been forced to flee their homes, creating Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The UN declared a famine in two districts in February, but said that crisis had started to ease in June last year.

“We are expecting to face the toughest year on record,” UN humanitarian coordinator Alain Noudehou told a press conference in the South Sudanese capital Juba. Records for South Sudan began when it declared independence from Sudan in July, 2011.

(Reuters)

Military Investigates After South Sudan Villagers Claim Gang Rape by Soldiers

Anglican Bishop Paul Yogusuk said that soldiers had attacked at least five women and girls in Kubi village, about 15 km southwest of the capital Juba.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir addresses members of the media after taking a tour around the capital Juba, South Sudan, October 12, 2016. Picture taken October 12, 2016. Credit: Reuters

Juba: The South Sudanese military has launched a rare investigation into allegations that soldiers gang–raped villagers, a bishop told Reuters on Sunday, after a week of high-level army resignations by officers citing rampant abuse.

Anglican Bishop Paul Yogusuk said that soldiers had attacked at least five women and girls in Kubi village, about 15 kilometres southwest of the capital Juba, a week ago following a deadly ambush on a military convoy in the area.

The ministry of defence had sent a senior officer to investigate the rape allegations, he said.

“This is a test case for the army, to see if they are serious about justice,” said Yogusuk. “The army has taken measures to investigate … they sent a brigadier general.”

South Sudan has been mired in civil war since President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer, in 2013. The fighting has forced more than three million people from their homes and has increasingly followed ethnic lines, leading the UN to warn of potential genocide.

Three high-ranking military officers and a minister resigned recently, citing rampant brutal human rights abuses by the military and ethnic favouritism that granted Dinka officers impunity.

Two of the officers oversaw the military courts system and said in their resignation letters that interference from senior Dinka officers left them unable to hold soldiers to account for abuses.

Referring to the latest claims, Yogusuk said that the soldiers beat and raped villagers from Kubi and locked the men in a small metal shed without food for two days.

Military spokesman Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang said he was preparing a statement but was unable to comment on the latest allegations.

The military has previously said that it weeds out soldiers who commit abuses, but has provided little evidence to prove it. The UN has documented hundreds of rapes involving soldiers in the capital alone but investigations by the authorities are rare.

Yogusuk said that the attack left five women needing hospital treatment, including two girls aged 12 and 13.

“They were raped by many soldiers, not just one,” he said.

Resident Wani Mosa Ladu, 23, told Reuters over the phone that soldiers arrived in the morning of February 12 as people were preparing to go to market.

“The soldiers begin beating us, asking us to show them who was shooting people along the highway road. The soldiers consider us rebels,” he said.

“Our mothers all disappeared … some of them were raped. Our property was taken from our homes, every door was broken.”

Village chief Philip Ladu Samuel said he was beaten and detained along with 46 other men.

“The whole area was looted and destroyed,” he said.

(Reuters)

Over 50 Killed in Fighting Around South Sudan Town of Malakal

Dozens of people were killed in heavy fighting after rebels said they would try to seize control of the town.

Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) forces patrol in the camp of Lalo following heavy fighting over the weekend that killed dozens of people, close to Malakal, South Sudan, October 16, 2016. REUTERS/Jok Solomon

Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) forces patrol in the camp of Lalo following heavy fighting in Malakal, South Sudan. Credits: Reuters/Jok Solomon

Juba: Heavy fighting around the town of Malakal in South Sudan killed dozens of people over the weekend, a military spokesman said on Sunday, after rebels said they would try to seize control of the town.

The rebels had attacked government positions on Friday night but the military had held their ground, army spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said.

“Our forces were able to successfully drive them back with heavy casualties. Over 56 rebels were killed,” he told a group of journalists whom the government had flown to Malakal on Sunday to see the situation.

“We came here to let the people of South Sudan, and in particular the region, know that Malakal was not captured by the rebels as reported over the weekend.”

It was not possible to independently verify the reported casualty figures, but a Reuters photographer who flew to Lalo, a camp near Malakal, with the military saw 15 bodies nearby, a burnt building within the base, and bodies scattered in other positions. Soldiers said they were expecting another attack.

On Friday, the rebels said they had captured Lalo and the nearby location of Wajwok, and planned to seize Malakal.

“We want to make sure that the government are dislodged from the town and we take control,” deputy rebel spokesperson Dickson Gatluak told Reuters by phone from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Oil-rich South Sudan descended into civil war in December 2013 when a row between President Salva Kiir and his sacked deputy Riek Machar ended with fighting that often occurred along ethnic fault lines. Both sides have targeted civilians, human rights groups say.

The fighting initially ended with a peace deal signed in 2015, but violations have been frequent, and heavy fighting broke out again in July. Machar fled the country and is now in South Africa for medical treatment.

Gatluak said the international community’s failure to enforce the 2015 agreement was a major reason for renewed hostilities.

“We realised that there is not any political space, there is not any political settlement in Juba. The international community and the IGAD itself have failed us. They failed to keep that fragile peace agreement,” he said, referring to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a political bloc of East African countries.

Last week, violence in South Sudan killed at least 60 people, the military said. The UN said it had reports of civilians being burned alive in buses.

(Reuters)

Queer Rights Have Polarised the World – Here’s What We Can Do About It

Only by listening to local LGBT activists in hostile environments can the West stand up for human rights worldwide.

An asylum seeker from Uganda covers his face with a paper bag in order to protect his identity at a pride parade in Boston. Credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi

In much of the world, gay rights and recognition of sexual and gender diversity, appear to be progressing. In Europe, US, Latin America and Australasia, acceptance is growing of the idea that queer rights are human rights. Still, in large parts of the world, people face rape, murder and torture if they are perceived to be openly homosexual or transgender.

Terms are tricky: in this article I use the term “queer” to stand for everyone whose sexual orientation or gender expression deviates from the societal norm. There are times when one has to unpack the omnibus — and American — concept of “LGBT”: in some countries there is legal recognition of a trans identity but severe legal sanctions against homosexual behaviour. This is true of most of south Asia. In Iran, homosexuals are “encouraged” to undergo a gender transition as it is assumed that same-sex desires are proof of gender dysphoria.

The global situation suggests increasing polarisation, both between and within states. As the authors of a 2016 report on state-sponsored homophobia point out, some Latin American countries have been leaders in legal recognition of queer rights, yet “the region shows the highest levels of violence and murder against LGBTI population and in the most of the cases [sic] impunity is the rule.”

Progress is always ambiguous: South Africa has constitutional recognition of the need to prevent discrimination based on sexuality and has legalised same sex-marriage; Australia has neither. Yet the real life experience of most queer South Africans is almost certainly more difficult than for most Australians.

In other places, the growing assertion of queer rights has been met by a rise in homophobic rhetoric and legislation, as authoritarian religious and political leaders see queers as an easy target who can be attacked in the name of culture, religion and tradition.

In our book Queer Wars, Jon Symons and I traced the current backlash back to the espousal of “Asian values” by Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew and Malaysia’s Mohammed Mahathir in the early 1990s. Their rhetoric of protecting “traditional values” against western decadence, in particular “deviant” sexual or gender expression, foreshadowed the language now employed by leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni.

As western states push for acknowledgement of queer rights, there is a danger of playing into the hands of those leaders who want to portray queer issues as the imposition of neo-colonial values. Governments can rally nationalist fervour through homophobia; accusations against the EU for imposing “homosexual dictatorship” are central to right-wing rhetoric in the Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

Public statements by American officials in defence of “LGBT rights” over recent years have sometimes played into the hands of those who claim that homosexuality is a western import, even in societies where there is a rich history of same-sex intimacies.

Governments and religious leaders both create and reflect public opinion and there are few issues where different attitudes are as stark. Research suggests that more than 80% of the population of some western countries accept homosexuality, whereas the figure drops below 10% across much of Africa and the Middle East.

Given the passions that same-sex marriage arouses in western countries, it is not surprising that anti-queer rhetoric often revolves around the spectre of gay marriage. Nigeria used opposition to same-sex marriage to legislate against any freedom of association for queer people. A recent upsurge of homophobic demands from Indonesian political and religious leaders has invoked marriage as a threat.

UN has taken tentative steps towards including sexual orientation and gender expression within its understanding of human rights. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has been a strong supporter of queer rights. But these moves have met considerable resistance and while they are important there is no universally accepted norm that sees sexual orientation and gender identity as worthy of respect.

In 2016, the UN Human Rights Council appointed an “independent expert” to find the causes of violence and discrimination against people due to their gender identity and sexual orientation and discuss with governments how to protect those people. At its best, the UN can create what US scholar Ronnie Lipschutz called “an incipient global welfare system”, able to provide global norms and rules and to prevent local opposition to basic human rights principles. UN resolutions can be used by local activists in lobbying governments and an increasing number of UN agencies, led by UNDP and UNESCO, are incorporating queer issues into their agendas.

These interventions are important, but they can only be successful where they support locally-led initiatives and movements. Small queer movements have been growing across the world during this century, often displaying extraordinary bravery in face of great hostility, as is true for gay pride events in Kiev, Dhaka and Nairobi.

Listening to activists in hostile environments and supporting them on their terms, is a challenge that queer movements in the western world are only beginning to accept.

Dennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

South Sudan President Dismisses Six Ministers Allied to Rival Machar

Salva Kiir filled the vacant posts with people linked to a breakaway faction of Machar’s SPLM-IO party, further aggravating divisions between senior politicians in the oil producing nation.

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir addresses delegates during the swearing-in ceremony of First Vice President Taban Deng Gai at the Presidential Palace in the capital of Juba, South Sudan, July 26, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Jok Solomun

Juba: South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir fired six ministers allied to his long-time rival Riek Machar late on Tuesday, widening a political rift in the world’s newest nation and drawing threats of more fighting.

Kiir filled the vacant posts, including petroleum minister, with people linked to a breakaway faction of Machar’s SPLM-IO party, further aggravating divisions between senior politicians in the oil producing nation.

About 60,000 people have fled an outbreak of fighting between supporters of the two men in the past three weeks, the United Nations said, on top of the hundreds of thousands already forced to flee in two years of ethnically charged violence.

UN emergency relief coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, told a news conference during a visit to Juba that the violence and “the culture of impunity” must stop before the humanitarian crisis worsened even further.

The two years of civil war that erupted after Kiir sacked Machar as vice president in 2013 has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than 2 million, many of whom fled to neighbouring Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan.

The personal rivalry between Kiir, from the Dinka group, and Machar, a Nuer, has worsened ethnic splits in a country awash with weapons.

Both sides had agreed to a peace deal last year and set up a united government. But the ceasefire broke down several times and Machar left the capital last month, demanding that an international force intervene to keep their forces apart.

The chaos has dismayed regional and world powers who helped broker South Sudan’s secession from Sudan in 2011, and had hoped its independence would draw a line under decades of war and instability that spread across east Africa.

In Washington, US state department spokesman Mark Toner voiced dismay at the conflict and appeared to blame both sides.

“The United States is deeply disappointed in the leadership of South Sudan, that given the opportunity of independence, and then frankly a second chance that came with the August 2015 peace agreement, have thus far failed to put aside personal power struggles for the good of their people,” he told a daily briefing.

Toner said the United States was putting pressure on both sides to end the violence.

Kiir dismissed the ministers of the interior, petroleum, higher education, labour, water, as well as lands and housing in a statement read out on state television.

The replacements were made on the recommendation of vice president Taban Deng Gai, who announced he was taking over the SPLM-IO in July.

“We are not surprised by the steps taken by … Kiir and Taban Deng Gai,” said Machar’s deputy spokesman, Nyarji Jermlili Roman. He said Machar’s supporters would march to Juba “and end this drama” if a foreign protection force demanded by Machar was not deployed.

(Reuters)

South Sudan’s Vice President Riek Machar Withdraws Troops From Juba

Although a ceasefire was reached on July 11, the latest upsurge in fighting between rivals vice president Machar and President Kiir has left many South Sudanese angry and uncertain.

South Sudan first vice president Riek Machar attends a news conference at the Presidential State House following renewed fighting in South Sudan’s capital Juba, July 8, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Stringer

Juba: South Sudan‘s vice president has withdrawn with his troops to outside of Juba but is not planning for war, his spokesman said on July 13, as a ceasefire that ended heavy fighting with the president’s forces entered its third day.

Forces loyal to longtime rivals vice president Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir fought street battles in the capital during a five-day period until a ceasefire was reached on July 11.

The events mirror those of December 2013, when a two-year civil war began after Machar, sacked from his post as Kiir’s deputy, withdrew his forces from Juba and launched a full-scale insurgency.

“We had to move away from our base (in Juba) to avoid further confrontation,” Machar’s spokesman James Gatdet Dak in Nairobi told Reuters, saying he was in contact with Machar’s forces. “He is around the capital. I cannot say the location.”

Demand for a buffer

It was not clear what caused the latest rift between the two men who have long jostled for power, even before South Sudan‘s independence from Sudan in 2011. The flare-up was apparently sparked on July 7 when Kiir’s forces stopped and demanded to search vehicles with Machar’s troops.

Gatdet Dak said Machar would stay away from Juba until ceasefire details were worked out.

“He is not returning to the bush, nor is he organising for war,” the spokesman said, calling for an outside force to be deployed to act as a “buffer” between Machar and Kiir’s forces.

Other demands from Machar’s side are to implement a joint command, an integrated armed force and a joint police force securing Juba, all issues laid out in a peace deal but not yet implemented, said Gatdet Dak.

“This is the time for diplomacy… in an attempt to return the government of national unity into its position,” said Ateny Wek Ateny, the spokesman for President Kiir, adding Kiir had held a cabinet meeting with some opposition members on July 12.

Kenya Airways, which suspended all its scheduled flights to Juba on July 10, said it would restart them on July 14, putting on a larger aircraft to clear the backlog.

In another apparent parallel with 2013, Uganda said it was sending troops to South Sudan but this time they would only help evacuate Ugandans, Uganda government spokesman Ofwono Opondo said. In 2013, they had entered at Kiir’s invitation to support his government as well help with evacuation, Opondo said.

The latest upsurge in fighting has left many South Sudanese angry and uncertain.

“Both Kiir and Machar should be held responsible for the killing of their own people, and for their soldiers who looted our property and killed my husband,” said a tearful Juba resident Rose Juru, 28.

Kiir and Machar signed the peace deal in August 2015, but spent months arguing over details. Machar returned to Juba in April and was reinstated as Kiir’s deputy, a move that was meant to help cement the process.

(Reuters)

South Sudan: President, Vice President Order Ceasefire as Civil War Fears Grow

Recent fighting in South Sudan has raised fears of a return to the civil war that erupted in late 2013 and broadly ran along ethnic lines, pitting President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, against Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer.

Recent fighting in South Sudan has raised fears of a return to the civil war that erupted in late 2013 and broadly ran along ethnic lines, pitting President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, against Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer.

South Sudanese civilians watch Vice President Riek Machar speaking on a television set following renewed fighting in South Sudan’s capital Juba, July 10, 2016. Credit: Reuters

Juba: South Sudan’s president and vice president ordered their loyalists to cease hostilities on Monday after days of fighting threatened to plunge the country back into civil war and bring further instability to an impoverished region of Africa.

Fighting erupted four days ago in the capital Juba between followers of President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, the former rebel leader who became vice president under a deal to end a two-year civil war.

The violence, which has killed hundreds of people, broke out as the world’s newest nation prepared to mark five years of independence from Sudan on July 9.

Presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said Kiir and Machar had spoken by phone on Monday, a day which saw tanks and helicopters involved in some of the fiercest clashes yet.

“All the commanders of (Kiir’s) forces are directed to cease any hostility and abide by the order and control their forces,” Ateny told Reuters. “President Salva Kiir is determined to carry on his partnership with Riek Machar.”

Machar responded by ordering his troops to stand down.

“The president has declared a unilateral ceasefire, I want to reciprocate the declaration of unilateral ceasefire,” he told the independent Eye Radio.

Much is unclear, however, about the latest violence in Juba, including what the objective of either side has been and how much control Kiir and Machar have over their forces.

The US State Department said it was carrying out an “ordered departure” of its staff from South Sudan.

South Sudanese policemen and soldiers stand guard along a street following renewed fighting in South Sudan’s capital Juba, July 10, 2016. Credit: Reuters

The fighting has raised fears of a return to the civil war that erupted in late 2013 and broadly ran along ethnic lines, pitting Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, against Machar, a Nuer.

The conflict killed thousands of people, forced more than 2.5 million people from their homes and left almost half the population of 11 million people struggling to find food. Oil production, by far the biggest source of government revenue, has plummeted.

A new flare-up risks driving yet more people to refugee camps in neighbouring countries in the central African region, which is already plagued by myriad woes.

Central African Republic is riven by conflict, the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo is contending with a patchwork of militias and rebels groups, and Burundi is embroiled in a violent political crisis.

The UN Security Council on Sunday demanded Kiir and Machar rein in their forces and end the fighting. The UN mission in South Sudan, UNMISS, expressed its “outrage” after its bases in Juba were caught in the crossfire between the two sides and two Chinese peacekeepers were killed.

The US condemned the violence and said it would hold those who commit atrocities or impede efforts to stop the fighting “fully accountable.”

“We call on those fighting to return to their barracks. This senseless and inexcusable violence, undertaken by those who yet again are putting self-interest above the well-being of their country and people, puts at risk everything the South Sudanese people have aspired to over the past five years,” White House national security adviser Susan Rice said in a statement.

Wrangling

Kiir and Machar have long been rivals, both in politics and on the battlefield. Civil war broke out in 2013 a few months after Kiir sacked Machar as his deputy.

Fighting has often erupted outside Juba since the two men signed a peace deal in August last year. But this was the first time it had flared in Juba since Machar finally returned in April after months of wrangling about terms of the pact.

Clemence Pinaud, an assistant professor at Indiana University and an expert on South Sudan, said that tensions increased in Juba during the past month.

“We most likely witnessed an acceleration … into a full-on war in Juba between the two parties,” Pinaud said.

Experts say the failure to swiftly implement important elements of the deal, such as integrating and demobilising their forces, has allowed tension to fester and risked igniting a new conflict.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday urged the Security Council to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan, sanction leaders and commanders who blocked the implementation of a peace deal and fortify the UNMISS mission.

There has been no official death toll from the recent flare up but at least five soldiers died on Thursday and a Health Ministry source said 272 people, including 33 civilians, were killed on Friday. Sunday and Monday’s fighting was more fierce.

UNMISS said gunfire had erupted on Monday around the U.N. headquarters in the Jebel area of Juba and also around a base near the airport. It said U.N. sites had been hit in exchanges of fire, killing eight and injuring 67.

Highlighting lawlessness on Juba’s streets, one resident said he saw police officers trying to loot a shop in his neighbourhood by shooting off the padlocks and firing in the air to scare away people, echoing similar witness reports on Sunday.

An army spokesman said that any soldier found stealing civilian property or looting would be arrested, and shot at if they resisted.

The African regional grouping IGAD echoed the UN Secretary-General’s call to beef up UNMISS’s mandate, calling for it be given an enforcement role similar to a U.N.-backed intervention brigade working in eastern Congo.

Through the civil war, however, world powers and regional states struggled to find leverage over the warring factions, despite U.S. and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions.

(Reuters)

South Sudan Peace Deal at Risk Over Rebel Leader’s Delay, Say Monitors

The US, UN Security Council and the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission have voiced concern over the latest setback.

South Sudan’s rebel leader Riek Machar (R) and South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir exchange signed peace agreement documents in Addis Ababa on May 9, 2014. Credit: Reuters/File Photo

Juba: South Sudan‘s government and rebels on Wednesday accused each other of hindering rebel leader Riek Machar’s return to the capital to form a unity government, with monitors of a peace deal warning the delay was putting the agreement at risk.

Machar was due to come back to Juba on April 18, but officials said on April 19 his arrival had been postponed indefinitely for “logistical” reasons.

Machar and his rival President Salva Kiir signed a peace agreement in August aimed at ending a two-year conflict in which thousands were killed and 2 million forced to flee their homes. But implementation has not been smooth.

A government official said Machar was held up because he had wanted to bring equipment and troops into Juba in excess of what was agreed with Kiir’s camp. Machar told Al Jazeera television that the government was creating “obstacles” to his return.

The US and the UN Security Council have both voiced concern over this latest setback. The body monitoring the peace deal, the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) also said it was worried.

“The agreement is at risk,” said Festus Mogae, JMEC chairman.

“Having come so close to the formation of the transitional government of national unity, all parties must ensure that the spirit of reconciliation, compromise and dialogue embodied by the agreement should be protected,” he said in a statement.

Under the power sharing deal, Machar will return to Juba and immediately be sworn in as first vice president.

Kiir’s decision to sack Machar as his deputy in 2013 had precipitated the crisis that led to conflict later that year.

Fighting has often run along ethnic lines, pitting Kiir’s dominant Dinka ethnic group against Machar’s Nuer. Despite the peace deal, there have been sporadic clashes for which each side has blamed the other.

JMEC includes members of the South Sudanese government, the opposition, as well as representatives from the African Union, UN, US, China and European nations.

The conflict, which erupted barely two years after South Sudan‘s independence in 2011, has hammered the economy and left swathes of the 11 million population without enough food.

Oil production, South Sudan‘s main source of revenue, has tumbled as oil fields have been cut off and global prices have dropped.

The JMEC statement said Mogae expressed disappointment at Machar’s failure to fly to Juba – from Pagak near the Ethiopian border – despite a chartered flight arranged for Monday and Tuesday. He said he hoped it could be rescheduled “within days.”

JMEC said would meet on Thursday to discuss the matter.