Médecins Sans Frontières - WEBCLIP : Uganda, peace restored (ENG)

Unique Identifier Code / URN MSF209762

Date taken / Date Recorded 11/12/2016 12:00 AM

Country Uganda

Commissioning section MSF-FRANCE

Photographer / videographer / producer Mohammad Ghannam

Copyright MSF

Formal Consent Copy available no

Editor's rating ★★★★★ (C)

Video format h264 (Constrained Baseline) (avc1 / 0x31637661)

Duration 6m3s

Maximum Size 1920px × 1080px 620.31 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist COMMENTARY
This is Yumbe in north Uganda. It’s the end of a long journey for these people fleeing the horror of the civil war back in South Sudan. Most of the refugees arrive with nothing. They will settle on this stony ground here using the few tools and plastic sheeting they’re given to put together makeshift shelters. In spite of everything, they’re relieved to be out of South Sudan.

Regena (woman in local language)
My mother’s still there and I don’t know if she’s dead or alive. Back home people were being slaughtered with knives and kids crushed with big logs. I saw little girls getting raped.

COMMENTARY
Some refugees experienced the violence first hand; others saw neighbours or relatives massacred… raped… their homes looted. All expressed feeling exposed to extreme danger in South Sudan.

Mary Ropani (woman in local language)
I was frightened I’d get killed, that’s why I came. Everyone escaped, including myself.

COMMENTARY
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, after 30 years of conflict. Two years later civil war broke out between government and opposition forces. A peace deal was signed in 2015 but collapsed once and for all in July 2016 when capital city Juba became engulfed in unleashed violence.
The fighting spread rapidly to the south of the country, until then spared from the conflict.
Trapped in a vicious cycle of attacks and reprisals, people hid in the bush or escaped to neighbouring countries.

Jean Luc Anglade, MSF country representative in Uganda (in French)
We started monitoring the refugees’ arrival in the camps in Ajumani in mid-July - reception camps where people were initially supposed to spend just a few days. (…) From there, they were transferred to the refugee camp in Bidi Bidi, in Yumbe district. And then in August, huge numbers of refugees started arriving - 40,000 people were registered in the space of a month. Right now, there are almost 250,000 refugees in the camp. Most are from Equatoria in South Sudan.

COMMENTARY
At the end of December, 1,000 to 1,500 people continued to arrive every day at Bidi Bidi camp.
The journey to Uganda though is extremely risky. Many of the refugees pass through the Democratic Republic of Congo to avoid stretches of road that are too dangerous.
This 16-year-old boy lost both his parents. He hasn’t been here long. He spends much of his time drawing.

Simon (man in local language)
My mother was taken and stabbed to death on the way to the farm. My father was shot in Juba.
Because of all this, my uncle paid for me to travel to Uganda.
On my way I saw vehicles with passengers who’d all been murdered.
You don’t hear the sound of gunfire here.

COMMENTARY
Shida started working for MSF shortly after arriving in Uganda in September 2016. She came from Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where heavy fighting broke out in summer 2016.

Asibazuyo Veni Shida (woman in English)
It was every day… Even my neighbour… They shot a neighbour. That’s when I said I can’t… At first we were on foot, from there you get a car. There there is a problem ahead, you stop. We bagan on foot and from there we got a car… When they heard there was a problem ahead, they’d stop. So we’d stop, then we’d be on foot again, we’d get on another vehicle… For us, because we came with a group, it took 4 days, then we reached the border.

COMMENTARY
Three months on, Shida has had little news from Juba.

Asibazuyo Veni Shida (woman in English)
My phone was taken on the way, so no more information. Some numbers I know off by heart, but when you call the network says that this number is not available. So I can’t know exactly what is going on there.

COMMENTARY
Shida supervises the team tasked with chlorinating water. Providing water to 250,000 refugees with safe water has been one of MSF’s principal challenges.

Jean Luc Anglade, chef de mission en Ouganda, MSF (en français)
We’ve also set up a large-scale latrine programme. The plan is to construct over 1,000 — with other organisations, of course. We have three clinics up and running and we’re building a small hospital in zone 4 of the refugee camp to assist people in need of inpatient treatment. There’ll also be a maternity unit.

COMMENTARY
Simea (prononouced She-may) is a religious leader. He has taken it upon himself to welcome new arrivals and offer them guidance. He’ll soon be heading back to South Sudan, to look after his parishioners who haven’t fled the country.

Simea Nicko Abuda (man in English)
All of us were born in a war, we grew up in a war, becoming old in a war, and we’ll die in war. And that’s terrible. How can that be?
A country without civilians is not a country. We need a country where civilians are being protected, are being valued

COMMENTARY
Those leaving South Sudan are all too aware they risk losing everything they own, and that they’ll have to start from scratch. Yet despite all the challenges ahead, their only option for now is to build themselves a new life in Uganda.

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