UN says thousands being displaced as fresh conflicts erupt in parts of South Sudan
January 8, 2016 (GENEVA) – Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced in recent weeks as a result of conflict with the South Sudanese army in Western Equatoria and Western Bahr el Ghazal states, reports the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
“Sporadic gunfire is commonplace, and there has also been an increase in crime involving car-jackings, attacks on government property, looting of civilian homes and sexual assaults reportedly by armed youth,” UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards said in a briefing to reporters.
The report said a recent UN mission to Yambio found nearly 200 houses burnt down in the neighbourhood of Ikpiro and several hundred others looted. People have taken refuge in the town centre or moved to nearby villages, displacing at least 15,000 people in Western Equatoria’s Yambio and Tambura counties since the start of December.
The violence is also driving people to flee their homes and head hundreds of kilometres to the south-east into neighbouring Uganda, where 500 refugees have been registered every day since the beginning of this week – a quadrupling in recent numbers. As well as the violence, refugees cite food insecurity due to failed crops as a reason for their flight.
Last month, UNHCR reported that fighting between local groups known as the “Arrow Boys” and the South Sudan army in Western Equatoria had displaced over 4,000 people into a remote region of north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
As of last Friday, the number of registered new arrivals, most in the area around Dungu, had risen to 6,181 comprising 4,164 South Sudan nationals and 2,017 Congolese who had previously been living as refugees in South Sudan.
The influx, the report indicated, has continued so far into 2016, although at a much reduced rate. The government refugee agency has recorded 268 in the past week.
“Overall, these are alarming developments for a region of South Sudan that has until now been relatively stable. The implications for humanitarian access to some 7,400 refugees living in Western Equatoria are very worrying,” Edwards said.
Adrian Edwards, for the UNHCR, expressed growing concern at the rising insecurity in South Sudan’s state of Western Equatoria, where fighting between local groups and the government soldiers was driving the people from their homes.
More than 4,000 people had fled into a remote region of north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in December 2015, while the number of new arrivals had risen to more than 6,000 during the first week of 2016.
UNHCR, it says, is in contact with government authorities regarding the security of those refugees and has negotiated additional UN peacekeeper protection through patrols as well as support to relocate refugees to safer areas.
The violence which erupted in December 2013 has produced one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies with 2.3 million people forced to flee their homes, 650,000 of these across borders as refugees and 1.65 million displaced inside the country.
(ST)