South Sudanese who are living in protection of civilians sites across the country are there because of a failure of leadership, US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said while visiting the country.
“It’s our chance to see the human consequences of the failure of political leaders to bring peace back to their country. These are the consequences,” she told journalists at the PoC.
Power was in South Sudan during a four day visit along with other members of the United Nations Security Council.
There are roughly 200,000 people living in UN sites across South Sudan, and there are nearly 40,000 living in the Juba PoC. Recently, new arrivals to the PoC have struggled to receive food aid.
People in the PoC “said that they want this prison sentence to end, and the only way it’s going to end is if the UN force gets up to full strength, the Regional Protection Force deploys and the peace agreement is implemented,” Power said.
The Security Council “heard a lot of gratitude to the international community for the food and the water and so forth, but it’s very fragile. When the World Food Program warehouse was raided in July and destroyed and looted, it meant that rations here were cut dramatically and people who had come to rely on food suddenly lost access to that food,” Power said.
When Power visited the Juba PoC, a large crowd demonstrated nearby, demanding that the regional protection force come.