South Sudan hit by wave of kidnappings of women and children

The door of the small humanitarian plane slams down on the gravel airstrip at Pibor in eastern South Sudan. Clara (all the first names of the victims have been changed) descends the three steps which separate her from the arms of her father and her husband, who have come to welcome her on this hot March morning. Kidnapped in the summer of 2022, during an attack by shepherds belonging to the Nuer group and originating from the neighboring state of Jonglei, she has just been repatriated from the town of Bor by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan.

On the tarmac, the relatives of the young woman whisper prayers by touching her hair, shoulders, arms. His return is a miracle. After walking 200 kilometers to reach the village of her captors in Jonglei State, Clara was separated from her 4-month-old child. Exposed to multiple mistreatments before finally being chased away by her captors, she wandered for months, walking to the Ethiopian border where a man picked her up before handing her over to the authorities.

Clara’s story is nothing out of the ordinary. Since the beginning of the year, one hundred and seventeen women and children from the Murle group abducted in the Grand Pibor region have been able to return to their homes. Hundreds more are still held against their will. Authorities estimate that 1,810 people were uprooted from their families between December 24, 2022 and mid-January. Assaults by heavily armed Nuer and Dinka herders claimed the lives of 661 Murle villagers on Christmas Day.

“A form of slavery”

Despite the 2018 peace agreement ending five years of civil war in South Sudan, intercommunal violence has not ceased. In the east of the country, they have even worsened, with raids on cattle now frequently accompanied by the abduction of women and children. “It’s human trafficking, a form of slavery”, summarizes a UN official on condition of anonymity, emphasizing the extension of the phenomenon. The captives are intended to be exchanged for animals or money, or integrated into the families of their captors. According to the international official, approximately 9,000 people are currently affected by this form of servitude in Jonglei and Grand Pibor.

All communities are both actors and victims of these kidnappings. Young people “steal cattle to survive and to be able to get married. Paying an increasing dowry, which goes up to sixty, seventy cows, is difficult without raiding a neighboring community”analyzes Juma Ngare Allan, 35, teacher in Pibor. “If someone wants to get married, he needs cows, and that person can go and kidnap someone’s child to sell it and buy cattle. It is well known around here! », he adds, regretting the failure of Pieri’s peace process. In March 2021, a peace agreement was signed in this Jonglei village between the Nuer, Dinka and Murle communities. But he did not stem the violence.

Bianca, 18, was hiding in the forest when her captors found her, near the village of Gumuruk. “You are going to become my brother’s wife”, they explain to her in basic Arabic, since she does not speak Nuer nor do they mutter it. After four days of walking “barefoot, carrying all sorts of heavy things”, the young woman, ill, can no longer move forward. The men who kidnapped her then take her to a care center. There, government soldiers, who came in large numbers after being alerted by residents, managed to free her.

Locate abductees

Following the December 2022 and January attacks, authorities in Jonglei focused their efforts on a device to locate abductees. Efforts hailed by several Murle officials, as well as by Nicholas Haysom, the head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, at a press conference in January. But a doubt remains on the real conditions of these releases presented as voluntary: according to several sources, many are in reality negotiated against money.

The UN funds the air transport of the returnees, as well as the medical care provided to them upon their return. Then the South Sudanese NGO Gredo, in Pibor, takes care of the material conditions, ranging from accommodation to food, before ensuring that the families found by these women and children who have just been released are indeed theirs. An accompaniment that lasts until the return to the villages of origin “if the security situation is stable”says Peter Waran, a member of the organization specializing in child protection.

Helena, she returned alone to Pibor. Captured with her baby at the end of December 2022, near Gumuruk, she took advantage of an evening during which her captors got drunk on local alcohol to escape. “One of the kidnappers planned to keep me as his sister to get cows by marrying me off to someone elseshe says. (…) I pretended I was going to the bathroom, and I slipped through a hole in the bamboo fence. »

Separated from her child, the young woman walked for six nights “to avoid fainting from the heat”. On the seventh day, she finally reached a Murle village, from where she managed to reach Pibor and reunite with her husband. More than a week after this journey, his thinness, his cough, his barely audible voice, still betray his exhaustion. The five other women who were held with her did not return.

In Gumuruk, the spectacle of the devastated town recounts these enforced disappearances. Several plots formerly occupied are nothing more than simple black expanses, with charred ground. “It is the villagers who are missing, explains Atoti Kaku Korok, a traditional leader. We are still figuring out who died, who was kidnapped, who fled…” Those who have decided to come and resettle in Gumuruk are trying to rebuild their homes with the little they find, mainly plastic sheeting distributed by humanitarian organizations. “Now that I’m back, I think of all those who are still there”, testifies Julia, also kidnapped during the December attack with four of her children. Released by the Jonglei authorities, she only returned with two of them: the others, girls aged 3 and 4, were “sold”.