South Sudan: I forgot the country on the brink of the abyss

Francesca Spatinelli – Vatican City

In the south south, the rules for achieving the peace that his people need, but this was never known, because the real stable peace, based on justice, dialogue and the future, was never present. Father Federico Gandolf, a missionary of young pioneers, is witnessing the dramatic reality in this country of central Africa, which was characterized by war and desire for peace, tribalism, the meaning of the nation, despair and hope, and above all, through unparalleled misery in the world. Gandolph lived there since 2015. Just four years ago, in 2011, South Sudan was born as a country, the smallest in the world, but also the poorest.

Collapsed

Since 2018, the fragile agreement that ended the conflict that started in 2013 has been preserved. Mirage from peace has been exposed in recent months by ethnic and political confrontations between government forces and armed groups. Violence has also exacerbated the health situation, with tens of thousands of cholera, hepatitis and smallpox, as well as a radical increase in malaria and pneumonia. Violence, humanitarian and health crisis, food insecurity and severe climate phenomena prevent residents from reaching basic media and basic services such as water, sanitation, education and health.

Just a few days ago, the doctors condemned without limits – that on May 3 of an air attack on his Old Fangak Hospital – he condemned an increase in the assault on facilities, the mass displacement caused by the conflict and the absolute shortcomings of resources in health centers. “Hospitals, health and community have been abandoned even by its employees,” the organization, which talks about the “collapse of the country’s health system.”

Looting and floods

“Everything is missing to carry out a real peace process that guarantees – the missionary explains – a decent life for millions of population. The population resigned. Many young people, even minor, are recruited; children become soldiers; women and children are most victims; and the residents have exhausted.”

Gandolfi, after several years in the capital, Juba, now lives in Wow, in the west of the Ghazal Sea.

What happens at the time of the harvest gives the scale of the position: “armies and officers or not, reach the people and plunder everything, and steal what people planted in sweat and effort.”

These floods that were already destroyed by the war are added by the war, and in some cases the water does not withdraw for 4 or 5 years, which makes life impossible.

“The country is trying to wake up, new agricultural technologies are tested, and seek to change the type of production,” but then fought again. This happens in many of the ten states that make up South Sudan, where men from the main tribes are facing: Dinkka, in the government with President Salva Kiir, and NuerBy former Vice President Rick Maher, whose detention in March opened a crack in the 2018 agreement and put the country again on the edge of the abyss.

In those countries, there are many areas of the United Nations, “with thousands of people who have lived so far thanks to humanitarian aid, which has decreased dramatically with Trump administration discounts. For several years, the PMA (United Nations Food) program feeds more than 52 % of the population, giving food nearly 5 million people.”

Olaada de Endadiados

With all this disappears, what will be from the people who threaten them with their misery through the arrival of the refugees fleeing the war in Sudan, between the Sudanese armed forces and the rapid support forces, a conflict that is no longer limited to JARTUM, but it extended to the entire country?

Millions of people suffer from the humanitarian crisis

Wow, where the missionary lives is a wonderful traffic village. Even a few years ago, there was a railway linking it with Jardum. It was a commercial area where various ethnic groups were close to 2016, when they were beaten from the war that destroyed everything, starting with the infrastructure.

It is estimated that in 2025, about nine million people will need humanitarian assistance, which are added about two million displaced by violence and climate change.