Displaying items by tag: starvation

The food crisis in East Africa is escalating. Women and children are dying in South Sudan. The number of Kenyans needing emergency food has doubled in the past three months and could soon reach four million. Food prices are spiralling. Many people, weak with hunger, have to make long journeys just to find water. But the last months before the hoped-for harvest in June will be the hardest to bear. All food stocks were exhausted long ago. Most of the livestock are dead, and the crops are not yet fully grown. This is the period when people die. But a good harvest needs rainfall. The March-May rains in Kenya started late this year. In Uganda the rains started early but have been erratic - some areas getting too much and others too little. Mission agencies are giving support during this prolonged drought that has caused the death of livestock and people, but they need more help from the public as the crisis grows.

1 December 2016
 BBC News

“Ethnic cleansing is taking place in war-torn South Sudan, the country's UN human rights commission has warned.

It says it has observed starvation, the burning of villages and rape being used as weapons of war across the country.

The three-member commission, which was established earlier this year, has just completed a 10-day visit to South Sudan, which has been blighted by conflict for more than three years.

President Salva Kiir has denied that ethnic cleansing is taking place.

In a statement released on Thursday, the commission says "the stage is being set for a repeat of what happened in Rwanda" in 1994 - a reference to the killing of 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, in the space of three months.

Yasmin Sooka, the chair of the commission, said that everywhere the team went in South Sudan, it "heard villagers saying they are ready to shed blood to get their land back".

South Sudan's civil war has caused more than 2.2 million people to flee their homes. It began in 2013, two years after South Sudan became independent, when President Salva Kiir sacked his cabinet and accused Vice-President Riek Machar of instigating a failed coup.

Government and rebels agreed to attend peace talks in 2014, and a deal was signed a year later.

Mr Machar eventually returned from exile to be reinstated as first vice-president of a new unity government under Mr Kiir in April 2016.

However he was again sacked months later after renewed conflict.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-38174754

Please pray with our Sudanese brothers and sisters in Christ for an end to his conflict and for His peace and restoration to return to this troubled land. Pray that Satan, the ultimate genocidal killer, is bound and that tribal leaders will become peacemakers that can agree on a way forward that will avert the danger of genocide, bringing healing and blessing to both tribes.