South Sudan refugee crisis ‘most worrying in world’

More than one million children have fled South Sudan because of escalating conflict, creating the most worrying refugee crisis in the world, the UN has said.

“The horrifying fact that nearly one in five children in South Sudan has been forced to flee their home illustrates how devastating this conflict has been for the country’s most vulnerable,” said Leila Pakkala, the regional director of the UN children’s agency Unicef.

“Add this to the more than one million children who are also displaced within South Sudan, and the future of a generation is truly on the brink.”

Children make up about 62% of more than 1.8 million South Sudanese refugees who have fled to other countries, mostly Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan, the UN added in a statement.

“No refugee crisis today worries me more than South Sudan,” said Valentin Tapsoba, Africa bureau director of the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

“That refugee children are becoming the defining face of this emergency is incredibly troubling. We, all in the humanitarian community, need most urgent, committed and sustainable support to be able to save their lives.”
Inside South Sudan, more than 1,000 children have been killed or injured since the conflict first erupted in 2013, while more than one million children have been internally displaced.

Nearly three quarters of the country’s children are out of school – the highest proportion of out-of-school children in the world, the UN said.

South Sudan became independent in 2011 after breaking away from Sudan.

It was plunged into conflict in 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his sacked deputy Riek Machar of plotting to overthrow him.

Mr Machar denied the allegations, but efforts to mediate an end to the dispute between the two failed.