South Sudan: People with Disabilities, Older People Face Danger | WPN World People News

People with disabilities and older people in South Sudan face greater risks of being caught in fighting and greater challenges in getting necessary humanitarian assistance, Human Rights Watch said on May 31.

Nyayak Olo Bapit, a Shilluk woman from Malakal, pictured in Juba. She was forced to flee Malakal after a bullet struck her left thigh during fighting there in January 2014.

One year after the adoption, at the Istanbul Humanitarian Forum, of the Charter on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action, the United Nations and aid organizations should do more to accommodate the specific needs of people with disabilities and older people as they respond to the wider crisis and famine in South Sudan.

“People with disabilities and older people are often left behind during attacks and find themselves at much greater risk of starvation or abuse,” said Shantha Rau Barriga, disability rights director at Human Rights Watch. “This problem is especially acute in South Sudan, where decades of civil war has increased the number of people with disabilities, and where armed forces on both sides target civilians with impunity.”

In February and March 2017, Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 45 people with disabilities and older people in displacement sites in Juba and Malakal, as well as in Panyijar county in the former Unity state, where the UN declared famine in two counties in February. Human Rights Watch also met with aid organizations and the South Sudan Human Rights Commission.

The current conflict began in South Sudan on December 15, 2013, when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir – a Dinka – clashed in the capital, Juba, with those of his then-vice president, Riek Machar – a Nuer. People with disabilities and older people have been targeted and abused by the warring parties, often because of their inability to flee ahead of attacks.

Throughout the conflict, Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases of people with disabilities and older people being shot, hacked to death, or burned alive in their houses by the belligerents.

An older woman, recently displaced with her family from Mayendit to Panyijar county in the former Unity state, said that no civilians were off-limits in the attacks on her village: “The first time the government soldiers and militias came to my village in 2015, the old men and women who could not run were killed,” she told Human Rights Watch. “There was Gatpan Mut, for example, who was a little old, and Gatkui Jich, who couldn’t move, and many, many more whose names I can’t remember.”

During attacks in 2016 on Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites for displaced people inside of UN bases in Malakal and Juba, people with disabilities and older people were also left behind and struggled to find spaces to hide from attackers.

During a brutal attack by government forces on the Malakal PoC site in February 2016, three members of the same family with disabilities burned to death.

“When the fighting broke out, we fled to the UN compound and we left my mother and brother-in-law behind because they couldn’t walk and we couldn’t carry them,” a 45-year-old Nuer woman said. “The son of my brother-in-law, who had a mental health condition, would not leave his father behind so they all burned together in the fire.”

People with disabilities and older people who managed to flee violence have often faced problems getting crucial humanitarian assistance that other people don’t – from using latrines to accessing food distributions. People with limited mobility may not be able to reach aid hubs far from their displacement camps and cannot always rely on family or friends to carry them there.

“My children are not on the island and sometimes there are people who abandon their older relatives because we cannot offer them anything in return,” said an 80-year-old father of three children with lower body paralysis and no mobility device. “Now that I have been registered for the food distributions, I don’t know how I can access it unless I have someone to carry it for me because I have to crawl everywhere I go.”

With many aid programs focused on the UN PoC sites where more than 200,000 people have taken shelter, millions of other vulnerable civilians are effectively cut off from similar levels of support.

Aid groups, struggling to meet the needs of about 1.9 million South Sudanese displaced internally across the country as a result of the conflict and hunger, also face serious problems with security and access. Government and opposition soldiers have looted aid supplies, attacked staff, and obstructed access. To fulfil their missions, aid organizations should do more to ensure that they are meeting the needs of people with disabilities and older people, Human Rights Watch said.

Aid workers and donors should ensure that people with disabilities have access to humanitarian services on an equal basis as those without disabilities and that discrimination does not arise as a result of failing to make adequate provision for the needs of people with disabilities in their programming and distribution of assistance. They should ensure the participation of people with disabilities and older people in the design of their programs and develop strategies and action plans that eliminate physical, communication and attitudinal barriers to inclusion.

Humanitarian aid workers in South Sudan already do a lot with very little, but the needs of people with disabilities and older people – too often overlooked – need to be better integrated in their planning.

“The struggle for survival by people with disabilities and older people in the South Sudan conflict underscores just how devastating the abuses against civilians have been,” Rau Barriga said. “Humanitarian groups need to provide those who have managed to flee with life-saving assistance.”

Source:Human Rights Watch