As famine and violence loom, is this South Sudan's last chance for peace?

Peace talks start again today in Addis Ababa between government and rebel forces as aid agencies say a famine for hundreds of thousands is on the horizon.

|
Andreea Campeanu/REUTERS
People walk through the mud in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp inside the United Nations base in Malakal, South Sudan, July 25, 2014.

With a season of unplanted crops in South Sudan and the United Nations declaring the food security crisis here “the worst in the world,” time is running out to prevent the death by starvation of as many as 50,000 people, analysts say, caught in what is now a seven month civil war.

Diplomats in the neighboring Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa today aim to restart negotiations to get government and rebel forces in South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, to stop fighting – even as analysts worry the proliferation of militia groups has put much of the fighting beyond the control of political leaders.

More than 10,000 people have died and 1.5 million are displaced since deep animosity between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar broke into violence last December.

Farmers missed the planting season this spring due to fighting and aid groups are now struggling to reach hungry people, many of whom are caught in out-of-the-way places.

Aid agencies warn of famine before the end of the year if nothing is done to avert it. But already every day children are dying from malnutrition. Relief teams, unable to transport food by road due to rain, mud, and insecurity, have resorted to helicoptering supplies to people trapped by fighting in remote areas.

Humanitarian aid workers here say feeding programs must scale up to reach 3.9 million people in coming months or 230,000 children are in danger of acute malnutrition. They also warn that with South Sudan's appeal for aid now running short a billion dollars, some life-saving programs will run out of funds by the end of September.

"There's no window. We have to take action right now," says Jonathan Veitch, South Sudan's head of UNICEF, the UN's child welfare agency. Mr. Veitch describes spiraling rates of malnutrition that are becoming already severe enough in some places to shortly be termed as famine areas. Under models used by aid agencies the resulting severe malnutrition could take some 50,000 lives, many of these children. 

Besides funds, aid groups need an outbreak of peace to reach those in need. But there's little optimism ahead of today’s negotiations in Addis Ababa, which are set to restart after a month off.

Two previous ceasefires in late winter and spring were broken hours after signing.

Fighting continued last week amid sharp worries that the myriad armed groups roaming the country are slipping beyond politicians' control.

"Six months ago we had two parties and their allied forces more or less clearly defined," says Casie Copeland, South Sudan analyst for the International Crisis Group. "Now we're in a situation where we have nearly two dozen different armed groups and community militias with shifting alliances, and there's real concern that if progress isn't made soon the situation is going to deteriorate so far that an agreement between the two parties would not be enough to end fighting on the ground."

The peace process, led by Ethiopia's prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn, has moved slowly in order not to lose the scant leverage it has over belligerents. If these new talks fail, the prime minister and his team may have to turn up the heat. Hailemariam recently said today’s talks are "the final one" before imposing sanctions that might freeze the assets that South Sudan's leaders are thought to have stashed across East Africa

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to As famine and violence loom, is this South Sudan's last chance for peace?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2014/0730/As-famine-and-violence-loom-is-this-South-Sudan-s-last-chance-for-peace
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe