“It takes a village to raise a child. In the same way, it takes an array of partners to support crisis-affected people. We need urgent collective efforts to help the vulnerable population in South Sudan,” Ms. Nyanti, a native of Liberia, has been quoted as saying August 18.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), four humanitarian workers have been killed in the line of duty in South Sudan since the beginning of this year.
Across the country that gained independence from Sudan in July 2011, humanitarian workers, and overwhelmingly national humanitarian workers, are affected by the impact of armed violence, bureaucratic impediments, and targeted violence, OCHA has reported.
In the August 18 interview with ACI Africa, the Executive Director CSS said, “Aid workers saving the lives of the vulnerable people whether they are on the government or opposition’s side all need to be treated with dignity.”
“We know there are so many incidents that took place in different locations in the previous years that doesn’t put the country in a better position in terms of protection for the humanitarian workers,” Mr. Kuol further said.
He went on to highlight some of the challenges Caritas personnel face when responding to humanitarian situations, saying, "There are issues with insecurity when we are carrying out our activities, particularly our diocesan Caritas like Torit, where there was an incident in Ikwotos where our Carita member working with Caritas Switzerland was killed."
To strategize better, the Caritas official pledged to "activate the Caritas forum where we resume our Caritas forum meeting at the national level so that we coordinate ourselves as Caritas members to share information."
“If there are challenges, we come together as members to find ways of resolving them to stop it from happening,” he said, and added, “We have a number of Caritas in the country that will come together once a month to discuss these challenges.”
“We need to put some measures in place so that we don’t really enter into these problems like what happened in Torit,” Mr. Kuol told ACI Africa August 18 referencing the killing of Caritas Switzerland personnel in South Sudan’s Torit Diocese.
Patrick Juma Wani is a South Sudanese journalist with a great zeal and interest for Catholic Church related communication. Patrick holds a Diploma in Journalism and Mass Communication from Makerere Institute for Social Development (MISD) in Uganda. He has over 7 years of extensive experience in leading the development and implementation of media, advocacy, communication and multimedia strategy and operations, with an excellent track record of editorial leadership, budget management, and stakeholder outreach. He currently works as a Journalist for ACI Africa.
