ICC Note:
South Sudanese Christians are fleeing their country in numbers that exceed previous predictions because of the violence that has engulfed the world’s newest nation. Thanks to Uganda’s open refugee policy, these South Sudanese Christians have a place to go. However, Uganda now houses more than 900,000 refugees and has seen a strain on its resources. Refugee camps no longer have enough food, water, education and other services to provide for the almost 2,000 refugees who flood the country every day. Additionally, Uganda is struggling to provide for the refugees and its own citizens because of the strain on its natural resources. If the international community continues to ignore the needs of South Sudanese and Ugandans then these people could die of starvation.
06/23/2017 South Sudan (Whio) – Food aid soon will run out for nearly a million South Sudanese sheltering in Uganda in what has become the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis, the United Nations refugee chief said Friday.
“Disturbing shortfalls are emerging in critical areas such as food, shelter and education,” Filippo Grandi told a global summit seeking $8 billion for the crisis over the next four years. “Malnutrition rates among refugees are alarming. The World Food Program told us yesterday that the food pipeline here in Uganda will dry up soon.”
Friday’s summit brought pledges of $358 million, far short of the goal.
The East African nation now hosts 950,000 people from South Sudan. Most have arrived in the past year. Officials say host communities are near the breaking point.
Already, food rations have been cut in half for some refugees.
Uganda last year received three times more refugees from South Sudan than the number of migrants crossing the central Mediterranean, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said.
Guterres on Friday called the refugee influx “the biggest exodus of refugees in Africa since the Rwanda genocide” of 1994. He has urged South Sudan’s leaders to end the civil war in which tens of thousands of people have been killed since late 2013. More than 1.8 million people have fled into neighboring countries.
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