Another 36,600 refugees have reached Ethiopia since early September, and over 57,000 fled to Congo this year \u2013\u00a0marking the largest mass exodus of any conflict in central Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.<\/p>\n
South Sudanese authorities have denied civilians are being targeted, but the refugees’ accounts\u00a0point to both sides targeting civilians along ethnic lines, adding weight to the UN warning of a genocide in the making.<\/p>\n
The UN Commission met one woman who described being gang-raped by soldiers just three days earlier when her village was attacked, and heard reports of three other women who had been raped that very day by soldiers just outside the camp while going to collect firewood.<\/p>\n
They also met several displaced women in the Juba camp who were gang raped in July and four months later have not received adequate medical treatment for resulting complications.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cThe scale of rape of women and girls perpetrated by all armed groups in South Sudan is utterly unacceptable and is frankly mind boggling,\u201d added Ms Sooka.<\/p>\n
\u201cAid workers describe gang rape as so prevalent that it\u2019s become \u2018normal\u2019 in this warped environment but what does that say about us that we accept this and thereby condemn these women to this unspeakable fate?\u201d<\/p>\n
The report also noted that in the Western Bahr el Ghazal State civilians gave graphic accounts of how their husbands and children were robbed and murdered by soldiers from the army during violence in June in which at least 53 people were killed.<\/p>\n
Moreover in August it was reported that the movement of South Sudanese people was being restricted by the ongoing violence, harming their ability to get food and medicine to severely malnourished children.<\/p>\n
In light of the latest report, Leo Dobbs, UNHCR senior communications officer for Africa, told The Independent<\/em>: \u00a0\u201cThe report is very alarming. It\u2019s really time for some action to be taken. What\u2019s happening really looks very ugly.<\/p>\n\u201cIt is fuelling displacement \u2013 particularly to Uganda, but also lots of other countries in the region. It\u2019s such a shame for this country to be let down by its leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere had been a lot of hope. It\u2019s the world\u2019s youngest country. This is a tragedy.”<\/p>\n
Mr Dobbs added that the only viable solution was for the international community to ramp up their efforts at putting pressure on the country’s politicians to bring an end to the violence.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThe only solution possible is a political agreement.\u00a0There had been quite a lot of it\u00a0leading up to the peace treaty, but the international community needs to put political pressure on the government – this is the only way to curb this tragedy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(The Independent) South Sudan\u00a0is \u201con the brink\u201d of a genocide comparable to what happened in Rwanda, the UN has warned,\u00a0urging that the international community is \u201cunder an obligation” to prevent such a catastrophe from taking place. Following a 10-day visit to the country, the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan urged the international community\u00a0to take action after they… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}