Child, but there is no option
only need protection, education and food, but also love.
“These children live in fear. They are deeply traumatised because of the violence they have seen,” says Badaru.
Children who end up in the refugee settlements without parents — either because they got separated on their flight or because their parents died — are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and neglect, aid workers say.
“We know they are more vulnerable because they are firstly still just children,” explains Nakasiita. “It eventually admitted a hospital in the settlement.
Strained relations such as these receive the attention of case workers from the Red Cross and the Lutheran federation, which monitor foster families. They help the children adjust and support the foster carers when the children are particularly difficult, Nakasiita explains.
Counselling is crucial for both the foster carers and their charges: many children are so traumatised that they need long-term counselling, she says. “We have to support them emotionally. These are children who have seen everyone in their family being killed, who don’t know where their parents are or who know they are dead and can’t visit their graves.”
Of the new refugees from South Sudan, 86% are women and children and 64% are children under the age of 18, figures from the UN Refugee Agency show. This makes it particularly difficult for the overstretched aid workers not only to make sure that children go to school, but also that they are safe from sexual and gender-based violence. Risks include forced marriage, early marriage, physical abuse and child labour.
The Red Cross helps to reunite children with their families through a tracing office in South Sudan. Aid workers help them phone, if they have any numbers to call, or circulate pictures. But with the ongoing conflict in South Sudan, it is difficult to trace people or even establish whether they are alive.
Adith Dau (16) is one of the veterans in the Nyumanzi settlement. She was 13 when violence broke out in Jonglei State’s Duk County in 2013. Adith grabbed her little brother, then five, and headed for the safety of the bush. They walked for days to an uncle in Bor County, who gave them money to get to the South Sudanese capital of Juba and eventually Uganda.
“I don’t know what happened to my parents or where they are,” says Adith. Slightly built and shy, responsibility has stripped her of any teenage light-heartedness. “It’s difficult taking care of my brother. When we come back from school there is nothing to eat at home and he usually starts crying.”
Adith has lost all hope of returning to South Sudan and finding her family. Despite the difficulty, she has settled here.
Nakasiita says: “This is no decent life for a child. But there is no option. We just have to keep on visiting them over and over and support them.
“This is not one session or two sessions: it’s an ongoing process. It is hard to undo their memories.”