South Sudan’s suffering people are on ‘brink of destitution,’ bishop says
March 28, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: “The number of internally displaced persons who are living in deplorable conditions and are starving has increased tremendously across the country, with the most affected being women, children, the aged, and people living with disabilities,” Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio, South Sudan, wrote in a recent letter.
“Consider the South Sudanese mother who watches her child die because of malnutrition caused by severe hunger; the young man who dies in the hospital because there is no medicine to treat him; the 9-year-old girl who, for a piece of ‘bambe’ (potato), is forced to sell her body; and the emaciated old woman who is lying inside her ramshackle hut awaiting death to take away her suffering,” he added, as he pleaded for international assistance.
The nation of 12.1 million (map), plagued by drought and flooding as well as the effects of civil war, is 61% Christian (38% Catholic), 31% ethnic religionist, and 7% Muslim; it gained independence from largely Muslim Sudan in 2011. Pope Francis made an apostolic journey there in February 2023.
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Posted by: Randal Mandock -
Mar. 29, 2024 11:44 PM ET USA
An indication of U.S. foreign policy priorities. Instead of providing billions of dollars of food aid to the starving South Sudanese, Palestinian, and Yemeni peoples, the current U.S. Administration spends hundreds of billions on meddling in the internal affairs of nations it economically colonizes and on foreign military campaigns that it bears responsibility for. Francis has addressed this hegemony in his recent statements about the military conflicts in Ukraine and Israel.
