Sudan: Towards a Proposal Solution to end Famine in South Sudan
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
Famine has plagued South Sudan for many decades. This situation is due not only to the geographical position of this country but also to the rapid climate change and ethnic wars. Several solutions have tried to bring relief to this significant problem of famine without real success. Therefore, it is advisable to think of it differently. In this work, I analyze the reel causes and impact of the famine in South Sudan. To bring the solution to the famine in this region, I suggest looking at the Israeli system of irrigation that succeeded in the desert and implementing it in the South Sudan context considering its realities to develop intensive agriculture and boost the country’s development.
KEYWORDS
Famine, Mass displacement
INTRODUCTION
South Sudan has experienced many famines, which cause the mass displacement of its population and animals. The frequent famine experience has long pushed the government and international community to overcome this great challenge. However, this situation also fuels ethnic conflict underpinning the political and economic stability of the country with consequences of violating human rights. How can Israel’s case of irrigation serve as a model to end or reduce a significant percentage of famine in South Sudan?
MAIN CORPUS
Understanding Reel Causes and Impact of Famine in South Sudan
Although famine can sometimes result from man-made catastrophes caused by wars and economic collapse, most famines in South Sudan are caused by natural disasters. Consequently, this force over 4 million people – 1 in 3 –to flee their homes. In addition, nearly 2.5 million have fled to neighboring countries. Famine has short- and long-term effects on physical health (especially severe undernutrition of children, pregnant women, adults) and economy and flaws in all society activities sectors. On adult health, the long-term effects of famine are the depression of the economic development of South Sudan. The coordination of humanitarian efforts contributed to addressing this issue so far. However, if nothing is done greater, the exact cause will produce the same effect and result in a repeated and continuous conflict.
South Sudan Famine Situation
South Sudan suffered the 1998 famine before its independence. On 20 February 2017, the UN officially declared famine in parts of South Sudan. This was due to several years of instability in the country’s food supply caused by war and drought. The famine primarily focused on the northern part of the country. An estimated five million people (nearly 50% of the South Sudanese population) were affected. In May 2017, the famine was officially declared to have weakened to a state of severe food insecurity. The international community uttered famine was man-made, pointing to the current conflict to generate such conditions. 70 000 TO 100 000 were reportedly died during the famine. In 2018 the UN, through the coordinated effort of its agencies, the World Food Program, the United Nations Children’s Fund), called for sustainable peace across the country. However, inadequate rainfall in 2018 has exacerbated the effects of the conflict and reduced crop production. A handful of peace agreements have been signed for the war — the most current in September 2018, but they have been constantly violated. But the situation in South Sudan remains precarious, and eruptions of violence continue.
Israel’s Land Reclamation Case as an Example For Zero Hunger in South Sudan
South Sudan is mainly covered in tropical forests, swamps, and grassland. The White Nile passes through the country, passing by the capital city of Juba. Half the water of the White Nile is lost in the swamps as vegetation absorbs it or animals drink it. The Sudd, the Bar El Gazal, and the Sobat River swamps provide a significant resource for wild animals and livestock. Referring to the case of Israel, a state-of-the-art irrigation system can be built from the Nile with a sophisticated drainage system. This, of course, requires coordination of effort at the highest summit of the Sudanese state. It demands the framing of a comprehensive program to develop the country’s soil and water resources. It requires numerous outstanding experts, such as specialists in soil science, forestry, horticulture plant breeding, and civil engineering. This expertise is to establish the ultimate modern agriculture in short order. Above this, a thriving national land development program should be found through a land inventory and classification according to their relative exposure to erosion and the water. Another critical point is to build the staff capacity in this domain to carry out such a mission in a particular department of agricultural engineering. With this system, South Sudan will develop a water supply and sufficient agriculture for its population.
SUMMARY *
The article proceeds from a diagnosis to a proposal. The diagnosis describes recurrent famine in a country whose water resources are substantial, and notes that the international assessment of the 2017 famine attributed it principally to the conflict rather than to drought. The proposal is technological: that the intensive irrigation and land reclamation methods developed in Israel could be adapted to the swamps and river systems of South Sudan to produce food security. The author’s closing question, whether continuing hostilities would permit such a programme, acknowledges the difficulty on which the proposal depends.
CONCLUSION
Throughout this process, our job has been to understand whether the Israeli desert irrigation system can be applied to southern Sudan to end severe famine. After analyzing the causes and consequences of this ending, it emerges that the Israeli example could well be used to the south of Sudan, considering its realities. Such a system undoubtedly requires hard work and coordination of financial and technical efforts at the highest summit of the Sudanese state. But will the ongoing hostilities favor the development of such a system?
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The author’s closing question is the decisive one, and the answer that emerges from famine research is uncomfortable for the proposal that precedes it. Famine in South Sudan has been repeatedly assessed, including by the United Nations bodies that declared it in 2017, as arising principally from armed conflict rather than from water scarcity. Fighting displaces farmers at planting time, destroys stored harvests, prevents markets from functioning and blocks relief convoys. Where that is the mechanism, infrastructure does not resolve it, and infrastructure built into an active conflict tends to become a target, a source of contested revenue, or both.
This does not dispose of the technical argument, but it reorders it. Water management has genuine potential in a country with the resources described here, and small scale approaches are considerably more promising than large ones in these conditions: community managed water harvesting, flood recession agriculture using the existing seasonal cycle, improved seed and storage, and veterinary support for pastoralists. Such measures are cheap, quick to deploy, and, crucially, resilient, because they do not depend on a functioning central state or on security along hundreds of kilometres of canal.
The Sudd deserves particular caution, and this is where the analogy with Israel becomes misleading. Draining that wetland has been attempted before, in the Jonglei Canal project, which was halted in 1983 and became a grievance in the war that followed, partly because the communities whose grazing and fishing depend on the seasonal flood were not consulted. The Sudd is not wasted water; it is the basis of a pastoral economy and a major ecosystem, and it is also the subject of downstream interests under the Nile water agreements. A project altering it would create new conflicts while addressing an old one.
The comparison itself is worth examining rather than dismissing. What made Israeli agriculture work was not principally the technology but the conditions surrounding it: functioning institutions, secure land tenure, decades of investment, research capacity and a state able to plan. Those are precisely what South Sudan lacks, and they are what any transfer would have to build first. Read that way, the article’s proposal converges with its own closing question: the sequence runs from settlement to institutions to infrastructure, not the reverse.
That places the immediate work where this journal would locate it. Local peace agreements between communities over cattle, grazing routes and water points have been negotiated successfully in South Sudan and have reduced violence in specific areas even while the national conflict continued. Humanitarian access negotiated with all armed actors saves lives now. And the implementation of the revitalised national agreement, particularly the provisions on security arrangements and the sharing of oil revenue, determines whether anything longer term becomes possible. Famine here is a political outcome, and the instruments that address it are political ones.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
References
Aljazeera. Famine declared in part of South Sudan’s Unity state. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/2/21/famine-declared-in-part-of-south-sudans-unity-state (Accessed June 11, 2021)
The Globe and Mail. Man-made famine Declared in South Sudan: United Nations says. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/man-made-famine-declared-in-south-sudan-united-nations-says/article34088530/ (Accessed June 11, 2021).
Oxfam International. Hunger crisis in South Sudan. https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/emergencies/hunger-crisis-south-sudan (Accessed June 14, 2021).
Luka, Edward E., and Ann Burgess. Famine and its Effects on Health in South Sudan. South Sudan Medical Journal, http://www.southsudanmedicaljournal.com/archive/august-2017/famine-and-its-effects-on-health-in-south-sudan.html (Accessed 14 June, 2021).
Wikipedia. 2017 Famine in South Sudan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_South_Sudan_famine
Wikipedia. Geography of South Sudan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_South_Sudan
Scientific American. 50 Years Ago: The Reclamation of a Man-Made Desert. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reclamation-of-man-made-desert/
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), technical reports on South Sudan, Juba and Rome.
Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), South Sudan food security outlooks, Washington, D.C.
Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan, Addis Ababa, 12 September 2018.
Checchi, F. et al. (2018). Estimates of Crisis Attributable Mortality in South Sudan, December 2013 to April 2018. London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London.
de Waal, A. (2018). Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Howell, P., Lock, M., & Cobb, S. (Eds.) (1988). The Jonglei Canal: Impact and Opportunity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, country programme documentation on agriculture and livelihoods in South Sudan, Rome.
Ethiopia: Addressing Sexual Violence in Tigray Conflict
How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT
Sexual violence is known as an overall result of armed conflict and other crises. However, in the Tigray region, it has taken another dimension. It has become the primary weapon of war in multiple faces with systematic rape. The late intervention of the international community, including local nongovernmental organizations, forced the Ethiopian government to speak on the issue. The need to balance its actions against the United Nations Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security to support the victim and ensure their future is the primary purpose of this analysis drawn from different sources. With the ongoing conflict, what is the future of sexual violence victims in Tigray?
KEYWORDS
Sexual violence in conflict, Rape, Gender-based violence, human rights abuse.
INTRODUCTION
Following the resistance of the Tigray government to align to the political reform of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a conflict erupted on November 4, 2021, between the special forces of the Tigray regional government and the Ethiopian National Defense forces. The escalation of tension has since provoked mass atrocities and human rights abuses especially sexual violence mainly in Mekele. Till today many voices are being raised to huge the government to stop conflict and allow humanitarian access.
MAIN CORPUS
Sexual Violence as A Normal Weapon of War in The Tigray Region?
In the current Tigray conflict, the prominent sexual violence in Mekele is systematic rape. Rape is of many kinds ranging from gang rape, rape in front of family members, and men forced to rape their family members under the threats of violence. Moreover, rocks, nails, and other dangerous objects have been moved inside women and men’s bodies, sometimes during sexual assaults, according to health workers. This kind of situation causes trauma and humiliation in the community. This psychosis forced patients to remain anonymous. However, even in a conservative society such as Ethiopia, it is worth acknowledging and encouraging women who take exceptional courage to share the most personal and excruciatingly inclement about their ordeal. Until March 25, 2021, five clinics reported more than 500 rape cases in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. It is likely too high.
The Implication of Sexual Violence on the UN-Resolution 1325
The U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security (2000) calls all parties to take extraordinary measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, in situations of armed conflict. After months of denials from Ethiopia and Eritrea, the voice of many organizations prompted the Ethiopian Prime minister to admit abuses might have committed. Distraught with the situation, Pramila Patten, U.N. special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, on April 14, 2021, asked the U.N. to act at the highest level to apply Resolution 1325 to the crimes in Tigray. This means to take sexual violence in Tigray as a war crime and deliver justice accordingly. Therefore, prime minister Abiyi Ahmed made a firm promise to hold accountable all the alleged perpetrators of sexual violence in Tigray. Not being respectful of anyone, Mr. Abiyi implied his soldiers. in the actual context, humanitarians’ narrow approach to sexual violence not only ignores victims/survivors other than the stereotypical but also frees perpetrators from scrutiny—including the international humanitarian community itself, through whose widespread depoliticization of sexual violence has expunged the connections between gender inequality and violence
Relief for Sexual Violence Victims
How the Ethiopian government is yet to deal with the crisis and ensure all the victims of sexual assault in the Tigray region will determine their future. The government must first put an end to the conflict through a peace agreement in which the cessation of sexual violence is a condition. On the other hand, it should monitor and check the raping even after the conflict to ex belligerent not to wage a proxy war on another’s woman, provide an environment for free medical and psychological support for all the victims renovate all the medical facilities. Furthermore, mechanisms should be put in place to encourage victims to open up while enforcing measures to fight retaliation. It is also interesting to foster gender justice, restore the rule of law in Tigray, and independently investigate by an independent expert.
SUMMARY *
The article makes two connected claims. The first is empirical: that sexual violence in this conflict is not an incidental consequence of fighting but a method of warfare, indicated by its patterns, the presence of witnesses, and the forms it takes. The second is procedural: that the international framework establishing this as a matter of international peace and security existed throughout, and that its application depended on pressure from human rights organisations and medical staff rather than on any automatic mechanism. Between the first reports and the government’s acknowledgment lay months of denial, and the author treats that interval as the central failure.
CONCLUSION
In Tigray, conflict-related sexual violence has become the primary weapon of war. It has caused much trauma, forcing victims, especially women and girls, to find uncertain places of refuge. Since the beginning and deafened by the international community and the Ethiopian government, the alarm raised by human rights organizations finally forced the latter to acknowledge that sexual violence had been perpetrated before making a solid promise to bring the perpetrators to justice. The level of sexual violence calls for a confrontation between the measures to be taken and united nations resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security to establish the belligerents’ responsibility. However, the war continues, and the Ethiopian government must letter an end to the hostilities. This will create an environment conducive to the prevention and care of victims of sexual violence through measures and mechanisms appropriate to a state of law.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The author’s recommendations are sound and their sequencing deserves attention, because in situations of this kind the order in which measures are pursued determines whether any of them reach the people concerned.
Care comes first and does not wait for anything else. The clinical needs following sexual violence are time bound: emergency contraception, post exposure prophylaxis against HIV, treatment of fistula and other injuries, and mental health support are effective when delivered early and diminish in value with every week of delay. This makes unimpeded humanitarian access not a general good but a specific medical necessity, and it makes the restoration of health facilities the most urgent single measure available. Support delivered through community structures, and by women health workers where possible, reaches people whom formal facilities do not, particularly in a setting where stigma and fear of retaliation keep survivors from presenting at all.
Documentation runs alongside. Evidence of sexual violence degrades quickly and the conditions of an active conflict are the worst possible for collecting it, yet without a contemporaneous record no accountability process years later can succeed. Trained documentation conducted to international standards, and above all according to the principle that a survivor is asked once rather than repeatedly by successive organisations, protects both the evidence and the person. Repeated interviewing by well meaning bodies is itself a recognised harm.
On accountability, the article’s reference to the framework of Resolution 1325 is right and can be made more specific. The Council’s subsequent resolutions on conflict related sexual violence, particularly Resolutions 1820 and 1888, establish it as a threat to international peace and security and provide for listing parties credibly suspected of it in the Secretary General’s annual report. Where a state investigates its own forces, as promised here, the test is whether the investigation is independent, whether findings are published and whether prosecutions reach commanders rather than only those who carried out the acts. Where that test is not met, international mechanisms exist, and preserving the possibility of their use is itself a form of pressure.
Two further points bear on the ceasefire the author calls for. Provisions on sexual violence belong in the text of any cessation of hostilities, with monitoring and defined consequences, since agreements silent on the subject have repeatedly been followed by continued violence in the areas concerned. And such provisions must survive the settlement: amnesty covering sexual violence has been included in peace agreements elsewhere and has consistently produced grievance rather than closure. A settlement that quietly extinguishes these cases purchases quiet from the parties at the expense of those they harmed.
Finally, a caution the article’s own reporting supports. Sexual violence in this conflict has been attributed to multiple forces, and survivors are found among several communities. A response organised around one group of victims and one group of perpetrators will fail those it omits and will be received as partisan by the communities it excludes, which in turn undermines the very accountability it seeks. Impartial documentation and impartial care are not neutrality about the crime; they are the conditions under which a reckoning can eventually be accepted by everyone who needs one.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
REFERENCES
Aljazeera. Ethiopia PM admits Eritrean soldiers entered Tigray region. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/23/ethiopia-pm-abiy-ahmed-says-atrocities-committed-in-tigray (accessed June 8, 2021).
Anholt, Rosanne. Marrit. 2016. Understanding Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict: Cutting Ourselves with Occam’s razor. Journal of International Humanitarian Action. https://jhumanitarianaction.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s41018-016-0007-7.pdf (Accessed May 28, 2021).
Mark, Simon, and Declan Walsh.2021. They Told Us Not to Resist: Sexual Violence Pervades Ethiopia’s War. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-sexual-assault.html (Accessed May 25, 2021).
Nichols, Michelle. 2021. Men forced to rape family members in Ethiopia’s Tigray, U.N. says. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-conflict-un-idUSKBN2BH2ZC (Accessed May 15, 2021).
U.N. Women. Addressing Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: An Inventory of Peacekeeping Practice. https://www.resdal.org/wps/assets/04dananalyticalinventoryofpeacekeepingpracti.pdf. (Accessed May 15, 2021).
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 (2000), 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013) and 2467 (2019) on women, peace and security and conflict related sexual violence.
Report of the Secretary General on Conflict Related Sexual Violence, annual editions, United Nations, New York.
Joint Investigation by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights into alleged violations in the Tigray region, report of 3 November 2021.
International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia, established by Human Rights Council Resolution S 33/1 (2021).
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998, Articles 7(1)(g) and 8(2)(e)(vi).
World Health Organization, UNFPA and UNHCR (2020). Clinical Management of Rape and Intimate Partner Violence Survivors, Geneva.
World Health Organization (2007). Ethical and Safety Recommendations for Researching, Documenting and Monitoring Sexual Violence in Emergencies, Geneva.