South Sudan’s innocent children deserve peace, not starvation

As tensions in South Sudan escalate, the humanitarian catastrophe is taking a turn for the worse. This week, relief agencies were reporting that fighting along the Nile River had blocked vital humanitarian aid from reaching more than 60,000 malnourished children in Upper Nile State—a region long pushed to the brink by poverty, conflict, and neglect. The latest escalation of violence threatens to tip an already fragile situation into tragedy.

According to the United Nations World Food Programme and Unicef, essential nutrition supplies will run out by the end of May if aid deliveries remain obstructed.

The organisations report that food-laden barges were forced to retreat to safety in mid-April due to insecurity along the Nile, a critical transport artery in the country. Roads are either impassable or non-existent, and the river is now effectively closed to the very vessels meant to bring hope.

This is not simply a logistical failure. It is a moral one. The fighting that has been raging between government forces and the White Army, an ethnic militia, since mid-March has not only cost lives and deepened political instability but has weaponized hunger.

The WFP was stark: The lives of children, hang in the balance not because food is unavailable, but because adults with long-held grievances, and foreign-supplied weapons continue to escalate a conflict that should have ended long ago.

To make matters worse, this crisis comes amid a political meltdown following the arrest of First Vice-President Riek Machar in Juba. The attendant tensions threaten to reignite the brutal civil war that ended in 2018, leaving behind 400,000 dead and millions displaced.

South Sudan’s leaders must be held accountable for dragging the nation back toward the brink. But the blame cannot lie with them alone.

The suppliers of military hardware—be they state actors or private entities—must face deeper scrutiny and international sanctions. Those who fuel conflict for profit are complicit in the suffering it causes.

The international community must make a judgement call. Mere expressions of concern are no longer enough. There must be a concerted effort to secure humanitarian corridors - whether by diplomatic pressure, peacekeeping presence, or targeted sanctions against those obstructing aid. Silence, inaction, or neutrality in the face of such cruelty is not very different from complicity.

It is shameful that humanitarian agencies have been forced to withhold aid, not because of lack of will or resources but because the delivery of food has become a potential trigger for looting, ambush, or destruction. This is the twisted logic of conflict—where warlords win and children starve.

This is the time for the combatants to show whatever remains of their humanity, by laying down arms. The time for armed posturing is over. If you claim to fight for your people, then let them live. Let the children eat. Let the mothers rest. Let the displaced return home.

And to those in the international community still hesitant to take sides, the choice is simple. It is between peace and destruction, between life and death. If the carnage and collateral damage are going to stop, the silence must also end.

Source: https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/opinion/editorials/south-sudan-s-innocent-children-deserve-peace-not-starvation-5035952