The over­looked con­flict: Civil war and human­it­arian dis­aster in South Sudan

Hentet fra  The Indian Express Yashee New Delhi, June  2 June 2026

AMONG The United Nations Peace­keep­ers to be hon­oured with the Dag hammarskjöld medal this year, given to those who lost their lives on UN peace­keep­ing mis­sions, is Indian national Naib Sube­dar Sujit Kumar Pra­dhan, killed in South Sudan last year.

India is the second-largest troops con­trib­utor to United Nations mis­sion in South Sudan (UNMISS), with 4,268 per­son­nel as of march 31. only Nepal has sent more.

South Sudan is the young­est coun­try in the world, cre­ated only 15 years ago. The nation’s short his­tory is marked with such con­flict that today, more than half its pop­u­la­tion faces acute food short­age. The latest round of fight­ing has been raging since march last year, in which hun­dreds are estim­ated dead while thou­sands have been dis­placed, though exact fig­ures are hard to come by.

The human­it­arian organ­isa­tion médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also called Doc­tors Without Bor­ders, has been oper­at­ing in South Sudan almost since the coun­try’s incep­tion. Its head of mis­sion, Yasho­vard­han, told The Indian Express, “I was in South Sudan in 2014, in Unity State, when the civil war first broke out in Decem­ber 2013. hun­dreds of thou­sands of people were dis­placed and put up in the UN peace­keep­ing mis­sion com­pound. This time, I went to Jonglei. After 12 years and in two regions, the situ­ation is the same. People live under the sun with the bare min­imum, sur­viv­ing on wild leaves, ber­ries, and fish. In fact, the UN runs one of its largest food pro­grammes in South Sudan, a coun­try of 12 mil­lion people [around the pop­u­la­tion of Chen­nai]. People mainly rely on food drops to sur­vive.”

Born of a viol­ent struggle

South Sudan was cre­ated after a long struggle for inde­pend­ence from the Repub­lic of Sudan, itself cre­ated in 1956 after Brit­ish and egyp­tian colo­nial rule ended. The south­ern region of this nation felt side­lined and unfairly treated, lead­ing to the birth of South Sudan in 2011.

Two lead­ers of the inde­pend­ence struggle, the Sudan People’s Lib­er­a­tion move­ment, were Salva Kiir, the cur­rent Pres­id­ent of South Sudan, and Riek machar, who served as his Vice Pres­id­ent when the coun­try gained inde­pend­ence. Kiir accused machar of plot­ting to over­throw him, and the lead­er­ship tussle between them flared up into a civil war in 2013, fuelled by local-level ten­sions and griev­ances.

Kiir belongs to the Dinka com­munity, while machar is from the Nuer group. Their sup­port­ers ral­lied behind them, and the two sides fought bru­tally.

The latest escal­a­tion

After five years of fight­ing, a peace agree­ment, ‘Revital­ised Agree­ment on the Res­ol­u­tion of the Con­flict in the Repub­lic of South Sudan’, was signed in 2018. machar came back as Vice Pres­id­ent.

however, many clauses of the agree­ment, includ­ing hold­ing an elec­tion, dis­arm­ing vari­ous groups, and pun­ish­ing those respons­ible for grave crimes dur­ing the war, were never imple­men­ted. Ten­sions between machar and Kiir con­tin­ued to sim­mer.

Then in march 2025, the White Army, a mili­tia that sup­ports machar, had a skir­mish with the Army. Within weeks, machar was placed under house arrest and over the next few months, charged with vari­ous crimes, includ­ing murder and treason. Fight­ing has been raging ever since.

Both sides have attacked civil­ians, and des­troyed homes, schools, and civic and med­ical infra­struc­ture.

Yasho­vard­han said there have been tar­geted attacks on med­ical facil­it­ies. “one of our facil­it­ies, in Lankien, was bombed. our med­ical stores were looted and burnt. The air con­di­tion­ers were torn down. essen­tially, it was left in a shape where it could not be restar­ted. This was the only facil­ity provid­ing sec­ond­ary care to 250,000 in Lankien and Jonglei states.”

Human­it­arian crisis

A UN report from April says, “hun­ger is push­ing 56 per cent of South Sudan’s pop­u­la­tion into high levels of acute food insec­ur­ity between April and July 2026… Through July this year, 700,000 chil­dren are pro­jec­ted to face severe acute mal­nu­tri­tion, the dead­li­est form.”

The UN mis­sion

UNMISS was set up on July 8, 2011, under Secur­ity Coun­cil Res­ol­u­tion 1996.

Accord­ing to the mis­sion’s web­site, “UNMISS’ most recent man­date, under Res­ol­u­tion 2820 (2026), requires the mis­sion to pro­tect civil­ians, cre­ate the con­di­tions con­du­cive to the safe, timely and unim­peded deliv­ery of human­it­arian assist­ance, use tar­geted good offices to sup­port the peace pro­cess and pre­vent escal­a­tion of polit­ical viol­ence, and mon­itor and report on human rights and inter­na­tional human­it­arian law viol­a­tions and abuses.”

This was the mis­sion Naib Sube­dar Sujit Kumar Pra­dhan was deployed with. Another Indian, Lance havil­dar har­bhajan Singh, who died last year serving in Congo, is also being hon­oured with the Dag hammarskjöld medal.