Send Emergency Food and Survival Supplies to Families Displaced in Violent Tribal Assault
Families fled for their lives as gunshots and fires raged through villages in the Western Equatoria state of South Sudan. Families could only grab their children and run from the sudden onslaught that overtook peaceful communities unexpectedly in Tombura County.
Now these families find themselves displaced with nothing left – no home to return to, no fields growing crops. Everything has been destroyed. They have only the clothes they are wearing. Many are women and children. Host communities and churches are striving to help the thousands who have been torn from their lives and livelihoods.
It is estimated over 30,000 people have been thrust into a place of complete dependency for help. Unable to return to their homes, they seek day to day shelter in faraway churches or sleep outside in distant areas within the state.
Despite efforts to help, the small churches and host communities are overwhelmed. Each day there is an urgent need for the most basic survival supplies like food, clean water, a change of clothing, hygiene and sanitation resources, as well as additional needs like eating utensils, mats or tarps for sleeping outdoors, and medicines for the sick or injured.
Bishop Eduardo Kussala of the Tombura Yambio Diocese reached out to churches and unaffected communities across the region, urging them to come to the aid of the displaced with anything they can share. The Bishop is also meeting with world relief and humanitarian organizations to galvanize resources for the internally displaced. The logistics of these arrangements take time, and every day families can do nothing else but wait.
Bishop Eduardo describes the situation in his own area with concern. “Children are becoming malnourished, and sickly without proper medication. The compound of the church is too small to accommodate the refugees. There are not enough latrines for all of them. There is need for emergency support to help these people survive.”
He continued, “There is not enough water. The only bore-hole in the parish is being competed for. They need support in terms of food items, shelter, water, and nutrition for the children. This is an emergency appeal. If they live like that for a week or two, they will be vulnerable to death, most especially children.”
The Bishop has reached out to us and our supporters for help to fund the most urgent needs at this time, for emergency food supplies of maize, flour, beans, and rice, to spare families from malnutrition and illness.
He is also asking for critical non-food supplies such as soap, plates, cups, saucepans, blankets, mats, and tarps, to help the refugees with immediate survival necessities. Bishop Eduardo recounts, “This atrocity has left the civilians desperate. They fled without recovering anything, only to save their lives and the lives of their children, but losing everything they had. They are living out in the open space with their children with nothing to cover them, nothing to eat, nothing to wear.”
This is an urgent situation. There is no time to waste for thousands of displaced people who need basics like food and water every day to survive, yet have nothing to help themselves. Families are completely dependent on outside intervention to survive this displacement, and to gain any assistance to hope for rebuilding their lives.
Bishop Eduardo pointedly described, “Once again, children, women and elderly are bearing the brunt of this crisis: being exposed to violence, having their education interrupted, being separated from their families, looted, abused, or killed. I am calling on all parties to ensure that civilians, especially children and women, are protected and kept out of harm’s way.” He added that this is in keeping with “our Christian convictions, human rights, and humanitarian law.”
Please help Sudan Relief Fund send immediate emergency assistance to these families. Any gift at all will help them survive in these desperate circumstances, and prevent this tragedy from growing worse.
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