The number of refugees from South Sudan has passed one million after renewed violence in July forced thousands to flee to neighbouring countries, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, according to the United Nations. “They include survivors of violent attacks, sexual assault, children that have been separated from their parents or travelled alone, the disabled, the elderly and people in need of urgent medical care”, it said in a statement received in Juba.
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South Sudan’s government is challenging a new report by a US -based watchdog group that says the country’s leaders have amassed wealth overseas amid a conflict in which tens of thousands have been killed.
“Most of those fleeing South Sudan are women and children”, Leo Dobbs, a spokesman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said at a briefing held at the UN Office at Geneva on Friday. And a surge of people have entered western Ethiopia’s Gambella region in the past week with others heading to Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) and Central African Republic.
The most recent is the arrival of a Boeing 747 aircraft in Entebbe carrying more than 100 tons of emergency relief items.
The civil war in Southern Sudan began in 2013 and lasted for two years.
Humanitarian organizations say they are finding it very hard for logistical, security and funding reasons in providing urgent protection and assistance to the hundreds of thousands in need, including 1.61 million internally displaced people.
South Sudanese refugees arrive at the Elegu border collection point in Adjumani district, northern Uganda.
The group, The Sentry, which was co-founded by actor George Clooney, accused South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir of enriching himself and several members of the military and government.
The report said Kiir, former deputy Riek Machar and those close to both men have looted the country in accumulating wealth that includes mansions, luxury cars and stakes in a number of businesses overseas.
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Kiir’s brother-in-law is described as sitting “at the epicentre of a sprawling business empire”, while the bitter rivals’ families seem to co-exist peacefully near Kenya’s capital.The report called out those institutions without whose help the plundering could not continue – global banks, lawyers, arms dealers and the like.
