South Sudan: Women 'Collateral Damage' in War

Nyariek Koang disappeared in February after leaving a refugee camp in Juba to walk part of the way into town with her husband.

"She must have been killed by soldiers on the road while she was walking back," says her sister, 23-year-old Nyajime.

In December, heavy fighting forced Nyajime, Nyariek and five other siblings to flee from their rural home in the country's oil-rich north. They found refuge in a tiny plastic shack in the refugee camp alongside United Nations House, the logistics centre for the UN's humanitarian mission in South Sudan.

After fighting for 25 years in Africa's longest civil war, South Sudan won independence from northern Sudan in 2011 and there were high hopes that one of the continent's least developed countries would finally start to thrive.

But the country's unity government collapsed late last year after President Salva Kiir fired Vice-President Riek Machar.

In the South Sudanese capital of Juba alone, some 80 000 refugees are being accommodated in three camps alongside UN bases after fighting erupted within the military on 15 December last year.

Around one million South Sudanese have been displaced and 50 000 children - mainly in rural areas - will die of starvation within months if transport routes are not reopened, according to the UN Children's Fund (Unicef).

Cholera and malaria plague the country, as the rainy season turns the ground into muddy disease incubators.

Abandoned villages are evident when approaching Juba from the air, and the few long orange roads that pencil through the fertile lands along the White Nile and its tributaries, are deserted thanks to the renewed war.

The current conflict started after President Kiir, who is seldom seen without a black cowboy hat, suspected Machar of plotting a coup in mid-December and ordered his presidential guard to be disarmed.

But guards from Kiir's Dinka tribe kept their weapons while those from Machar's Nuer tribe were disarmed. Nuer soldiers then revolted, seizing the Juba armoury and sparking conflict that spread throughout the country.