Abstract
The resumption of large-scale protracted violence in South Sudan has displaced over 2.6 million people and forced an additional 200,000 civilians into United Nations Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites. This chapter uses data collected from household surveys and key informant interviews in the Malakal Protection of Civilians (PoC) site to demonstrate the serious toll that the ongoing violence has had on civilians. We argue that the nature and extent of conflict characterized by extensive looting, purposive targeting of civilians, and widespread sexual and gender-based violence have led to high levels of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and have significant implications for short- and long-term peace.
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Notes
- 1.
An historical overview of the slave trade in the region that is now the Republic of Southern Sudan is beyond the scope of this chapter. For a useful summary, see D.H. Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars (Woodbridge, Suffolk: James Currey, 2011); M. Duffield, M, ‘Aid and Complicity: the Case of War-Displaced Southerners in the Northern Sudan’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 40, no. 1 (2002): 83–104; D.H. Johnson, ‘Recruitment and Entrapment in Private Slave Armies: The Structure of the Zarä’ib in the Southern Sudan’, Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 13, no. 1 (1992):162–173; and J.M. Jok, War and Slavery in Sudan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).
- 2.
Duffield, ‘Aid and Complicity’, 83–104.
- 3.
Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars; Duffield, ‘Aid and Complicity’, 83–104.
- 4.
Duffield, ‘Aid and Complicity’, 83–104; US State Department, Trafficking in Persons Report (Washington, D.C.: US State Department, 2014), 353.
- 5.
Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars; Duffield, ‘Aid and Complicity’, 83–104.
- 6.
While alarming, the practices of early and forced marriage and kidnapping linked to cattle raids are beyond the scope of this chapter and have been covered in depth in other studies. For further reading, see Human Rights Watch, This Old Man Can Feed Us (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2013); US Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2011, South Sudan (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, 2011); United Nations Mission in South Sudan, Incidents of Inter-Communal Violence in Jonglei State (Juba: UNMISS, 2012).
- 7.
The Greater Upper Nile region of South Sudan is made up of three states: Jonglei, Unity, and Upper Nile.
- 8.
Unless otherwise specified, ‘the conflict’ refers to the protracted violence between state and non-state actors that erupted in Juba on 15 December 2013 and quickly spread to other areas of the country.
- 9.
The six Protection of Civilians (PoC ) sites currently in operation include UN House Juba PoCs 1 and 3, Bor PoC, Malakal PoC, Bentiu PoC, Melut PoC, and Wau PoC.
- 10.
Portions of this text have been previously presented as a report for the United States Agency for International Development and South Sudan Law Society. See D.K. Deng, M.F. Pritchard, and M. Sharma, A War Within: Perceptions of Truth, Justice, Reconciliation and Healing in the Malakal PoC (Juba: United States Agency for International Development, 2015), 1–50. Additional support was provided by (AECOM/ Viable Support to Transition and Stability—VISTAS) and Humanity United. Special thanks to Vincent Valdmanis, Emmanuel Changun, and our field team.
- 11.
Beyond budgetary restrictions and the fact that humanitarian organizations working in the PoCs are already overextended, UNMISS fears that transitioning the PoCs into more permanent camps will encourage further migrations and significantly reduce (or further complicate) the potential for large-scale returns.
- 12.
The concept of livelihood security initially emerged in response to a more nuanced understanding of how individuals and households spread risk and balance competing interests to meet their needs; see S. Maxwell and T. Frankenberger, eds., Household food security: concepts, indicators, and measurements: a technical review (New York and Rome: UNICEF and IFAD, 1992). According to McCaston and Frankenberger, the concept of household livelihood security ‘allows for a broader and more comprehensive understanding of the relationships among the political economy of poverty, malnutrition and the dynamic and complex strategies that the poor use to negotiate survival’. See M.K. McCaston and T.R. Frankenberger, ‘The household livelihood security concept’, Food, Nutrition and Agriculture 22 (1998): 30–35.
- 13.
United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS ), Conflict in South Sudan: A Human Rights Report (Juba: UNMISS, 2014), 2.
- 14.
African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan (AUCISS), Final Report of the African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan (Addis Ababa: AUCISS, 2014); D.K. Deng, B. Lopez, M.F. Pritchard, and L.C. Ng, Search for a New Beginning: Perceptions of Truth, Justice, Reconciliation and Healing in South Sudan (Juba: United Nations Development Programme, 2015), 1–64.
- 15.
The root causes of this conflict are beyond the scope of this chapter, which focuses explicitly on how the 2013 Civil War is impacting the civilian population seeking shelter inside the Malakal protection of civilians site. For a detailed analysis of the causes and spread of violence, see African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, Final Report of the African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan (Addis Ababa: AUCISS, 2014); and M. Mamdani, M., A Separate Opinion to the AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan (Addis Ababa: AUCISS, 2016), 1–60.
- 16.
‘Refugees Fleeing South Sudan pass one million mark’, United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), accessed 3 October 2016, http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2016/9/57dbe2d94/refugees-fleeing-south-sudan-pass-million-mark.html.
- 17.
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2015). South Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan, January–December 2016 (Geneva: UNOCHA, 2015), 5.
- 18.
T. Franks, ‘Malakal: The City that vanished in South Sudan’, BBC, October 24, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34571435
- 19.
Specifically, the overwhelming majority of Dinka seeking shelter in the Malakal PoC are not originally from Malakal town, but they were displaced from Pigi County in Jonglei State and Baliet County in Upper Nile State.
- 20.
The main land dispute relates to a strip of land on the Eastern bank of the Nile River. According to the Shilluk, this land has always belonged to them, and the Dinka are trying to occupy the territory in order to establish political and economic ‘hegemony’ in Upper Nile State. Conversely, the Dinka assert that the Nile River forms the boundary between the two communities, and that the Shilluk currently residing on the East bank of the Nile are doing so at the invitation of the Dinka. Both groups use competing narratives of how the region was first settled to justify access to these landholdings. For more information, see Deng, et al., A War Within, 1–50.
- 21.
Participants were determined to have a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD ) if they scored a 3 (quite a bit affected) or 4 (extremely affected) on a corresponding item (thus a total score of greater than 2.5 on the HTQ), and/or met DSM-IV criteria for PTSD (one or more intrusion symptoms, three or more avoidance symptoms, and two or more hyperarousal symptoms). The traumatic events were events commonly reported by communities impacted by displacement, war, and genocide. Repeated events were grouped into categories of 1 (1 experience), 2 (2-5 experiences), 6 (6-10 experiences) and 10 (more than 10 experiences of the same traumatic event). For a more detailed explanation of the HTQ, see R.F. Mollica, et al., ‘The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire: Validating a cross-cultural instrument for measuring torture, trauma, and posttraumatic stress disorder in Indochinese refugees’, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 180 (1992): 111–116.
- 22.
A small fraction of respondents (less than one per cent) belong to the Murle, Anyuak, or Pojulu ethnic groups.
- 23.
The government lifted the month-long blockade of air and river routes in the second week of August 2015.
- 24.
Franks, ‘Malakal: The City that vanished in South Sudan’, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34571435
- 25.
Interview, 16 August 2015.
- 26.
It is highly likely that our results significantly under-record the prevalence of rape due to several methodological and cultural constraints. First, a household survey designed to collect large amounts of quantitative data rarely has the nuance or flexibility required to collect accurate and detailed responses of experiences with sexual violence. Second, collecting data on rape and other forms of sexual violence in a highly structured patriarchal society that stigmatizes women’s sexuality dramatically reduces incentives to share accounts of sexual violence and leads to significant under-reporting.
- 27.
H. McNeish, ‘Reliving the rape camps of South Sudan’s civil war’, Al Jazeera, 29 September 2015, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/09/reliving-rape-camps-south-sudan-civil-war-150929121909936.html
- 28.
McNeish, ‘Reliving the rape camps of South Sudan’s civil war’, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/09/reliving-rape-camps-south-sudan-civil-war-150929121909936.html
- 29.
L. Charbonneau, ‘South Sudan sexual violence “rampant”, two-year-old raped: U.N.’, Reuters, October 20, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southsudan-un-idUSKCN0I92C320141020
- 30.
‘UNICEF estimates up to 129 children massacred in South Sudan last month’, Radio Tamazuj, 18 June 2015, https://radiotamazuj.org/en/news/article/unicef-estimates-up-to-129-children-massacred-in-south-sudan-last-month; United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), ‘Children killed, abducted and raped in South Sudan attacks’, UNICEF Press Centre, 18 May 2015, http://www.unicef.org/media/media_81915.html
- 31.
Women’s group leader, interview, 16 August 2015, Malakal PoC.
- 32.
Male Nuer community leader, interview, 16 August 2015, Malakal PoC.
- 33.
At the same time, local narratives of the conflict cannot be separated from the ways that different communities use competing narratives of oppression to garner support and assistance.
- 34.
Male Baliet-Dinka elders, interview, 8 August 2015, Juba.
- 35.
For ease of reading, we identify participants ‘that meet the minimum diagnostic criteria of PTSD’ as participants ‘with PTSD’ for the remainder of this chapter. Similarly, those who fall below scale cut-off score are referred to as participants ‘without PTSD’. Although findings regarding PTSD are based on the cut-off score used by the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, caution should be exercised when making broader generalizations about the clinical significance of these findings.
- 36.
C.P. Bayer, F. Klasen, and H. Adam, ‘Association of Trauma and PTSD Symptoms With Openness to Reconciliation and Feelings of Revenge Among Former Ugandan and Congolese Child Soldiers’, Journal of the American Medical Association 298, no. 5 (2007): 555–559; P.N. Pham, H.M. Weinstein, and T. Longman, ‘Trauma and PTSD symptoms in Rwanda: implications for attitude toward justice and reconciliation’, Journal of the American Medical Association 292, no. 5 (2004): 602–612; J. Sonis, et al., ‘Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Disability in Cambodia: Associations with Perceived Justice, Desire for Revenge, and Attitudes Toward the Khmer Rouge Trials’, Journal of the American Medical Association 302, no. 5 (2009): 527–536.
- 37.
Specifically, individuals with PTSD exhibit less positive beliefs in a communal or interdependent vision of the future, are less likely to support trials for people suspected of committing conflict-related atrocities, and are less likely to report satisfaction with key components of accountability following conflict (such as satisfaction with the punishment of perpetrators, apologies by perpetrators, and remuneration for past sufferings).
- 38.
Male Shilluk elder and community leader, interview, 15 August 2015, Malakal PoC.
- 39.
Social-ecological models of health promotion help deconstruct and better understand the factors contributing to the individual’s health and development by studying the interaction between them, their families, their communities, and the infrastructural, political, and institutional contexts of which they are a part. Interventions targeting these various levels are more likely to have a larger and more long-term impact on health outcomes.
- 40.
Female Nuer elder, interview, 14 August 2015, Malakal PoC.
- 41.
Male Shilluk elder, interview, 15 August 2015, Malakal PoC.
- 42.
Female Nuer, interview, 14 August 2015, Malakal PoC.
- 43.
Male Dinka community leaders, focus group meeting, 15 August 2015.
- 44.
Male Dinka community leaders, focus group meeting, 15 August 2015.
- 45.
Male Nuer community leader, interview, 16 August 2015.
- 46.
Male Shilluk community leader, interview, 16 August 2015.
- 47.
‘South Sudan: Special investigation into Malakal violence completed, says UN’, UN News Centre, 21 June 2016, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=54289#.V-rjvjvZqHc
- 48.
‘Security Council Press Statement on Malakal, South Sudan’, UNMISS , 19 February 2016, https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/sc12252.doc.htm
- 49.
‘IOM Responds to Humanitarian Needs after Fighting Erupts in Malakal PoC Site’, International Organization for Migration (IOM), http://ronairobi.iom.int/news/item/766-iom-responds-to-humanitarian-needs-after-fighting-erupts-in-malakal-poc-site; ‘South Sudan: Special investigation into Malakal violence completed, says UN’, UN News Centre, June 21, 2016, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=54289#.V-rjvjvZqHc
Select Bibliography
African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan. Addis Ababa: African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, 2015.
Deng, David, Belkys Lopez, Matthew Forbes Pritchard, Lauren C Ng, Search for a New Beginning: Perceptions of Truth, Justice, Reconciliation and Healing in South Sudan. Juba: United Nations Development Programme, 2015.
Johnson, Douglas H. The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars. Suffolk: James Currey, 2011.
Jok, Jok Madut. War and Slavery in Sudan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
Mamdani, Mahmood. A Separate Opinion to the AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan. Addis Ababa: African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, 2015.
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Pritchard, M.F., Deng, D.K., Sharma, M. (2019). Trauma and Inter-Communal Relations Among a Captive Population: Preliminary Findings from the Malakal Protection of Civilians Site, South Sudan. In: Campbell, G., Stanziani, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Bondage and Human Rights in Africa and Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95957-0_16
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