Topic: South Sudan: 'a level of human suffering I have never seen anywhere else' (Read 178 times)

Children are paying the highest price for 22-month conflict that has displaced millions of people and pushed the world’s youngest country close to famine

Under a pink mosquito dome in a shack among the filthy alleyways of sector two of the Malakal protection of civilians (PoC) camp lies 11-day-old Pul.

Tiny, perfect, sleepy, and naked save for the beads around his neck and wrist, Pul is oblivious to the state of his homeland, a country born a little more than four years before him.

Outside the smoke-filled tarpaulin hut where he lives with his parents, aunt and six siblings, 45,000 people are sheltering under the protection of UN peacekeepers.'

Malakal, which sits a few kilometres away on the banks of the White Nile, was once South Sudan’s second city, home to more than 150,000 people, a cross-border trading hub and an international airport.

Today, after almost two years of civil war during which it has passed back and forth between government and rebel hands like a grubby banknote, the population has dwindled and no one seems quite sure how many people live there besides the government troops, the women selling coffee and alcohol, and those still hanging on in the hope of peace or earning a little money.

The ruined airport, which once offered flights north to Khartoum, is patrolled by blue-helmeted Rwandan soldiers, who amble across the pale orange ground carrying Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers.

Their presence reassures those living in the nearby camp. Behind the razor-wire fences and huge bags of earth that make up its perimeter, the people in the PoC count their blessings and their rations of sorghum and lentils.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/28/south-sudan-civil-war-human-suffering-children-displaced-famine