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Returning home to Southern Sudan [Photos]

Posted by Joanne Offer on September 17th, 2008

Baby Yang, who’s just one year old, was treated for life-threatening malaria in an IRC health center in Malualbai, Northern Bahr El-Ghazal. Just 24 hours after he started treatment, he’s showing great signs of recovery much to his mother’s delight. In coordination with the Ministry of Health, the IRC runs 2 primary healthcare centers and 12 smaller primary healthcare units in Northern Bahr El-Ghazal, bringing essential healthcare to more than 224,000 people. We train and employ essential health staff and supply medical equipment and drugs to all 14 facilities.

Baby Yang, who’s just one year old, was treated for life-threatening malaria in an IRC health center in Malualbai, Northern Bahr El-Ghazal. Just 24 hours after he started treatment, he’s showing great signs of recovery much to his mother’s delight. In coordination with the Ministry of Health, the IRC runs 2 primary healthcare centers and 12 smaller primary healthcare units in Northern Bahr El-Ghazal, bringing essential healthcare to more than 224,000 people. We train and employ essential health staff and supply medical equipment and drugs to all 14 facilities.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement delivered peace to Southern Sudan in 2005 after 21 years of civil war. Today, the government faces the uphill struggle of rebuilding essential services such as healthcare, education and water after two decades of disruption and violence.

The International Rescue Committee works in 11 counties in 5 districts of Southern Sudan, supporting the government to provide such services to thousands of returned refugees, formerly displaced people, as well as the host community.

Baby Yang, who’s just one year old, was treated for life-threatening malaria in an IRC health center in Malualbai, Northern Bahr El-Ghazal. Just 24 hours after he started treatment, he’s showing great signs of recovery much to his mother’s delight. In coordination with the Ministry of Health, the IRC runs 2 primary healthcare centers and 12 smaller primary healthcare units in Northern Bahr El-Ghazal, bringing essential healthcare to more than 224,000 people. We train and employ essential health staff and supply medical equipment and drugs to all 14 facilities.
Camisa, an IRC maternal and child health worker, treats Salva who is 5 months pregnant with her first child. The primary healthcare center in Malualbai has a special ante-natal section where pregnant women can receive check ups and immunizations. Women can also give birth in the center’s well-equipped delivery room.
In areas where a high number of people have returned home following the 2005 peace agreement, IRC monitoring teams regularly visit villages to ask residents what daily life is like. For example, we collect information on the availability of essential services such as education, safe drinking water and healthcare. This information enables the IRC and other aid organizations to provide the most appropriate response. We also share it with those Sudanese refugees who remain overseas to keep them informed about the situation at home.
Geoffrey, one of IRC’s returnee monitoring team who collect this kind of information, is himself a returnee. During the war, he fled to Uganda with his younger brother and grandmother. Geoffrey says, “When I do this job, I realize many people are like me, they’ve gone through the same thing. When they tell their stories, my feelings, they come back. I remember what it was like. “This program is very important because it focuses on protection, it focuses at the grass roots. The standard of information we get has been excellent, much higher than other NGOs.”
One of the more frequent requests from returnees and host communities is for organizations like the IRC to provide more training and job opportunities. Here Isaac, 24, proudly holds up a certificate to show he’s just graduated from IRC’s latest vocational training course in computer skills and office administration, held in Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan.
Clean drinking water is also a priority for many communities, so the IRC is installing boreholes with hand pumps like this one around in and around Aweil Town, Northern Bahr El-Ghazal. This particular pump is in Maper Akot village. Before its installation, women and children had to walk about 30 minutes to collect water. The hand pump now serves dozens of households in the village, as well as families who’ve been displaced by recent flooding. (About 2,700 households have been displaced from four villages in Aweil.)
Next to the hand pump, an IRC-trained volunteer treats water with chlorine to kill bacteria that cause diseases such as cholera. Just 3 ml of solution can treat a 20 liter jerry can of water. It’s simple, quick and cheap but vital – there have been more than 90 cases of cholera and 3 deaths at Aweil civil hospital since the 28th of July.
In Rumbek, the IRC is also trying to start conversations in communities about family harmony and promoting good relations between husbands and wives. Colourful posters – like the one shown here – are used to provoke conversation and initiate debate.
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Posted in Africa, children, education, health, women | No Comments »

What makes a Ugandan warrior lay down his gun?

Posted by Joanne Offer on August 25th, 2008

Karamoja peace committee IRC photo
Women from an IRC peace committee sing a song about how raiding hurts communities and how peace can unite them instead.   Photo: Joanne Offer/The IRC
Joanne Offer is in Uganda, where the International Rescue Committee is working with Ugandan communities affected by conflict as well as refugees from neighboring Sudan.

This piece was originally posted on Reuters AlertNet on 18 August. You can read all of Joanne’s posts from Uganda here.

What makes a warrior lay down his gun? I got the intriguing chance to find out when I met the Nadunget peace committee - a group of 40 or so men and women, many of whom were once involved in or affected by armed raids, but who now promote peace across Moroto district in the Karamoja region of northern Uganda.

The committee members go to nearby villages to sing peace songs, play out dramas and use their own experiences to explain why fighting benefits no one. Women who’ve been widowed by raiding talk of the emotional and financial hardship of losing their loved ones. Children who’ve been orphaned tell others that life is precious. It’s heartbreaking stuff to hear.

It’s quite a culture shift for many of the committee, which is one of nine formed with the help of aid agency International Rescue Committee (IRC) to maintain peace in a region formerly troubled with violent raids to steal cattle.

As one man told me: “I was only young when I started going on raids. I was in Primary 2 when my father told me to stop going to school. He said there was another school in the bush where I could get a real education. So I started raiding.

“Between 50 to 100 of us used to go on a raid together. We were indestructible. Me, I used a big gun and it felt great. I was ready to shoot and I had a lot of bullets.”

So what made the difference? How does a former warrior end up on an IRC peace committee? It’s clear that it wasn’t an overnight change for these men, but they slowly realised that raiding was destroying their communities.

“Guns have finished many of our people,” says one man, “we’ve all lost someone in the raids.”

Another committee member tells me: “In the past, people raided because of poverty, and it’s still a huge problem in our area. But I tell them that we should look at our neighbours. They’ve done better than us because businesses have gone there. Businesses won’t come here because they are scared of raids.”

Big-scale raids are now more unusual in Karamoja, although there’s still a threat from smaller groups of thieves. These thieves are often young men, struggling to survive in a region hit by drought and with few opportunities to make a living. But maybe the committees can help to persuade them that the gun is not the answer.