PANYAGOR, South Sudan – The small plane packed to capacity with people and medicine touched down in a cloud of dust and was immediately surrounded by people who had been almost completely cut off from the outside world by two months of conflict in the world’s newest nation.
CARE was returning to Twic East County, where the conflict forced a temporary closure of our office in December. CARE has supported the county’s health system for the past 7 years, as well as implementing Village Savings and Loans associations and other livelihoods activities. The small plane was loaded with 1,000 kg of drugs to bolster the health department’s dwindling supply and a team of humanitarian experts with the goal of assessing people’s needs.
“The number one priority for everyone we talked to was food,” said Wouter Schaap, CARE’s assistant country director. “They were already hurting from a bad harvest last year due to massive flooding from the White Nile River, and damaged and soggy pastures have wreaked havoc with the livestock they depend on,” Schaap said. Fighting that has raged both north and south of the area has closed the roads to traffic and trade. As a result, the local markets are bare and restaurants are closed. “They have exhausted their food stores,” Schaap said.
On top of that, there has been an influx of more than 31,000 people displaced by fighting in other parts of the state, boosting the local population by more than a third and further taxing scare resources. “Some of the children showed visible signs of malnutrition,” Schaap said. “People told us they were only eating one meal a day, if that.”
The assessment team’s findings are consistent with the humanitarian community’s warning that the crisis in South Sudan will get a lot worse unless relief organizations are able to deliver supplies to people before they are cut off again, this time by the fast-approaching rainy season.
“The United Nations has activated the highest level of emergency for South Sudan and warned of a possible famine in 2015,” said Aimee Ansari, country director for CARE in South Sudan. “This is a wake-up call. If we are not able to act now and get relief flowing, the nightmare endured by South Sudanese families over the past few months will be only the beginning. We need to do everything we can to improve food security and help those suffering get back on their feet, and we need to start now.”
Continued fighting in the countryside, despite a Jan. 23 cease-fire agreement, has made it so far impossible to reach many of the more than three quarters of a million people who have been displaced in the country. CARE has moved back into areas hardest hit by the conflict as quickly as possible, providing life-saving services including water and sanitation supplies, and vital health and protection services for women and girls.
In addition to bringing badly needed medicines to some of the worst affected areas, CARE is conducting assessments that will allow us to ease the effects of the crisis projected to affect up to 7 million people – more than half the country – over the next five months. CARE water, sanitation and hygiene programs are active in three states and our nutrition activities are just getting under way.
CARE had to charter a plane to get back into Twic East, in the highly conflictive state of Jonglei. The area has seen only a little fighting, but many people still are too afraid to sleep in their homes.
Click here to read more about CARE's response in South Sudan.