South Sudan gained independence just six years ago. South Sudanese people had to start over in July 2011 and build a foundation of their country with the promise of a better quality of life, with the hope to thrive and most importantly, they had liberation. Their struggle for freedom from Sudan seems ominously in vain now. Political conflict particularly within the ruling political party that led the liberation movement, The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, drought, economic instability and civil unrest has caused famine, violence, displacement and ultimately mass death.
SO WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
The war hasn’t resulted in just displaced people, it’s resulted in one of the worst food shortages in recent history. So not only do South Sudanese people have a war hanging over their heads, there’s famine, displacement and loud silence from the world. Over half the country’s children are not in school, not even this has managed to pull on global heartstrings. This is not a humanitarian crisis, it’s a humanity crisis and humanity is either unaware or standing on the side-lines watching the death toll rise to compile statistics.
There’s often no sense of tragedy when Africans are suffering and when we’re killed, it’s become so normalised and unsensational. Like Africa is synonymous to human suffering and that’s why benevolence is missing. If the whole of Africa died the world would walk over our dead bodies to reach for gold mines and remove our teeth to make “exotic” necklaces. Like they’re doing now, they would dismiss our pain and make excuses for our death by calling it a war when innocent children couldn’t possibly have been a part of it. A war is between two or more groups, when innocent bystanders are killed because those groups were at war, they died as innocent bystanders not as people who were at war.
CHILDREN OF COLOUR ARE DYING AND I DON’T HEAR THE WORLD MOURNING
According to the UN, thousands have been killed, two million children fled to other countries and more than one million are displaced internally. Millions of children are suffering and it hasn’t caused the world to sing songs in solidarity and do benefit concerts? There’s widespread violence towards innocent people, homes being burnt to the ground, kidnappings and murders in masses. The world stands still to mourn Europe and American tragedies but the death of millions of Africans won’t even make major headlines. The children bear the brunt of this war and yet there is minimal noise. It is wrong to kill anyone no matter how old they are but it is especially heinous when children are killed.
A world that can not even spare the children has lost the very essence of humanity and compassion but so has a world that sits silently while children are starving and slaughtered.
