Women raped while trying to access aid

WRAPPING an arm around her stomach, the young woman hung her head and recounted the day in early November when she and a friend were bound, dragged into the bush and raped by four men with guns.

“My body hasn’t been the same since,” the 18-year-old said. The men attacked them during an hours-long walk home to the South Sudan village of Nhialdiu. “I was crying and screaming but I was so far from the village that no one could hear me,” she said.

In an exclusive look at the aftermath, the AP joined a UN peacekeeping patrol where the attacks occurred as humanitarians, rights groups and South Sudan’s government scrambled to find out more.

Rape has been used widely as a weapon in South Sudan.

Even after a peace deal was signed in September to end a five-year civil war that killed nearly 400 000 people, humanitarians have warned of higher rates of sexual assault as growing numbers of desperate people try to reach aid.

While some aid groups have quietly questioned whether all 125 people in the Doctors Without Borders report were raped, they do not dispute that the problem has become grave.

Joining the UN patrol on Friday, the AP travelled the potholed road where the recent assaults took place.

Several local women said the violence is escalating. Nyalgwon Mol Moon said she was held at gunpoint last month while two men stole her clothes, shoes and the milk she meant to sell at market.

Food in Nhialdiu and nearby villages is scarce. Most people could not cultivate last season because of fighting and too much rain. Many rely on monthly aid from the UN’s World Food Program.

That means a walk of almost 40 kilometers to Bentiu town. Unable to carry the heavy rations back in one trip.

Alarmed by the sexual assaults, the World Food Program said it is prepared to bring distribution points closer to communities.

The UN is now clearing the road from Bentiu to Nhialdiu of debris to make access easier.

No one has taken responsibility for the wave of assaults that the UN and AU have condemned as “abhorrent” and “predatory”.