Attachments
Since the beginning of the current round of conflict in Southern Kordofan (SK) and Blue Nile (BN) civilians have been injured, killed, detained, abducted and displaced on a massive scale. The number of attacks rose sharply between 2013 and 2014 and continued apace in 2015. There has been a 78% increase in bombing incidents in 2015 compared to 2012. Monitoring on the ground has shown that bombings coincide disproportionately with planting and harvesting cycles, as well as market days, suggesting a deliberate plan to decimate the local economy. As a result, 1.7 million people – roughly half the population of the two states – have been displaced, and food insecurity has reached crisis levels for many of those who remain.
This dire situation is exacerbated by the blocking of independent humanitarian access to rebel held areas of SK and BN, which prevents those in need from accessing assistance. This, combined with poor rainfall, has resulted in the Famine Early Warning Systems Network predicting that food insecurity will rise to crisis levels in rebel held areas generally in early 2016 and “in conflict-affected areas of Southern Kordofan, food security outcomes are likely to worsen from Crisis (IPC Phase 3) to Emergency (IPC Phase 4) by March 2016 among IDPs and poor residents.”
Living with the daily threat of aerial bombardment, of the government of Sudan’s (GoS) land forces breaking through the rebel Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement–North (SPLM-N) frontline, and a chronic lack of food and medicine, the resilience of this population is being severely depleted. Meanwhile the international community remains, for the most part, silent.