Andrew Green

theandrewgreen (at) gmail (dot) com @_andrew_green He had to take that life as he best could, with such accidental education as luck had given him. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-33422593-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[theandrewgreen]

Fighting restricts access to health care in South Sudan

A health worker recognized the illness right away. 4-year-old Sunday John had the telltale skin eruptions that come from a kala azar infection. As the disease progresses, parasites, transmitted by sand flies, nestle in internal organs and slowly destroy the immune system. The disease is almost always fatal.

Fortunately, the health worker told Sunday's mother, Regina Deng, that the disease is treatable. It requires a series of injections over at least 12 days. Unfortunately, he could not help. Instead, she had to cross a frontline in South Sudan's ongoing conflict to get treatment for her daughter.

Because fighting has destroyed much of South Sudan's health system, people must increasingly cross through dangerous areas to access the health care that is available.

You can read the full article for The Lancet here.

[theandrewgreen]

Stay of expulsion

In the midst of one of the world's worst humanitarian crisis, the relationship between South Sudan's government and the aid community is deteriorating. The consequences could be severe. From my latest for Foreign Policy:

Revoked or not, some in the international community see the original circular as part of a broader pattern of government hostility toward international humanitarian workers, which includes legislation currently in front of the National Assembly that would give the administration broad control over how and where non-governmental organizations operate. It could even be interpreted to give the government the power to kick NGOs out without explanation.

You can read the full article here.

[theandrewgreen]

Dire living conditions in Bentiu camp

The 47,000 people who have fled to the UN base in Bentiu, South Sudan, lack most things. In some parts of the camp, 158 people are forced to share one latrine. Women and children swelter for hours waiting for their turn at a borehole. August downpours destroyed mattresses and clothes and replacements are virtually impossible to come by. The only thing there is too much of is the toxic green water - left over from last month's rain - a stagnant pool across much of the camp that flows into people's homes with each new storm.

Click here to read my latest for IRIN.

[theandrewgreen]

Agencies battle to stave off starvation in South Sudan’s civil war sanctuaries

I traveled to an area deep within rebel territory in South Sudan, for this story on one community that has been cut off from food for nearly nine months.

Kwene Biel is one of nearly 14,000 people who have spilled into Pathai and the surrounding areas in Uror county since the fighting started, according to local leaders. It has brought the recent incomers relative security, but the war has choked off their access to food.

Traders refuse to make the trip to Pathai and for months the market has been empty of salt, oil and sugar. Stocks of sorghum from last year’s harvest are nearly exhausted. This year’s crop failed because there was not enough rain. Biel, who brought nothing with her and has no land to plant, is feeding her children boiled leaves.

Click here for the full story.

[theandrewgreen]

Women fearful in South Sudan camps

A look at violence against women in South Sudan's displacement camps.

Women are worried that the attacks have become part of the fabric of camp life. So in the absence of more police patrols or redesigned camps, she said women living in the base are willing to take on the task of protecting themselves. But they want better options than shoving a bedframe in front of their doors or going to the bathroom in a bag.

You can read the full story here.

[theandrewgreen]

In the midst of the ongoing Ebola outbreak, The Lancet asked me to write an obituary of one brave doctor who lost his life fighting the spread of the disease.

The day before he was scheduled to sit some secondary school exams, Sheik Humarr Khan read an obituary in a local newspaper. A German doctor who had come to Sierra Leone to help treat people with Lassa fever had contracted the disease and died. Alhajie Khan said his brother, who was then 15 years old, showed the clipping to his friends. His brother recalls how Sheik Humarr Khan told them, “This is very important. This German doctor came here to help. I’m going to try to be a doctor, as well.” He succeeded, qualifying in medicine and surgery from the University of Sierra Leone's College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences in 2001 and ultimately becoming one of West Africa's leading virologists. He was the Physician-in-Charge of Kenema Government Hospital's Lassa Fever Programme when he died.

Click here for the full obituary.

[theandrewgreen]

South Sudan heads toward famine amid 'descent into lawlessness'

The Guardian picked up my story on the deteriorating political and humanitarian situation in South Sudan as fighting continues in the country.

Each new clash exacerbates the country’s desperate food security situation. The international community has warned that famine could arrive as early as December. At least 1.1 million people are facing emergency food shortages. And – until fighting stops – aid agencies do not have access to tens of thousands of people who need their help.

Click here to read the full story.

[theandrewgreen]

South Sudan's seeds of the nation

I wrote long for Al Jazeera magazine's War Veterans issue on South Sudan's Red Army - a group of former child soldiers who are trying to bring peace to the country.

You can view the full spread here.

[theandrewgreen]

South Sudan capital faces worsening cholera outbreak

Amid war and widespread hunger, South Sudan is now facing a cholera outbreak, as well.

When the outbreak was announced, Juba Teaching Hospital set up an emergency isolation ward. It filled quickly, with patients sleeping in open-air corridors that have been covered with tarps. Trina Helderman from Medair, a humanitarian group providing emergency services in the country, has been stationed at the ward since it opened. She told IRIN that initially they were seeing more than 100 patients a day, though the intake has slowed.

Click here for the full story.

Photo: Matthew Abbott/IRIN

[theandrewgreen]

What would a transitional government look like?

In the wake of the agreement between the administration and the rebels to form a transitional government, I wrote a piece for The Guardian about possible models the two sides might employ.

Now that the creation of a transitional government has been integrated into the peace process, the conflict will not be resolved if either side disagrees with a formal proposal. Which is why another, less-discussed policy draft focuses on the question of leadership.

Full story here.

[theandrewgreen]

Health, protection risks in overcrowded UN bases

My latest for IRIN:

“So many people are saying there is nowhere else for them to go,” Toby Lanzer, the UN humanitarian coordinator in South Sudan, told IRIN after a recent trip to Bentiu. The opportunity to shelter in the camps is “giving civilians who are just stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time, a sense of hope.” But the fear is they may have exchanged the dangers of the frontline for new risks: The start of the rainy season could speed disease outbreaks within the congested camps, while a civilian attack on one UN compound this month left dozens of people dead and signaled that the bases cannot necessarily shield people from the fighting they moved there to escape.

Click here to read the full story.

[theandrewgreen]

Is nowhere safe in South Sudan?

My latest for Foreign Policy comes after a massacre in one state capital and the attack on a displacement camp in another.

Nyazode Thiyany is desperate to leave South Sudan. As strangers wander by the tent where she is tending to her severely malnourished infant son, Shamis, she calls out to ask them whether they will buy her a bus ticket out of the country. Much better, she adds, if they can do it soon. Once Shamis recovers, she will have to move out of the inpatient clinic that Doctors Without Borders is running on the United Nations base in Juba and return to her small shelter nearby in the midst of the stinking, overcrowded displacement camp.

The full story is here.

Photo: Ivan Lieman/AFP/Getty Images

[theandrewgreen]

Trading peace for power

A lengthy essay I wrote for African Arguments on evidence of creeping authoritarianism in the midst of South Sudan's conflict.

The tone of Kiir’s February appearance could not have been further removed from that dystopian television broadcast. This time the president was playing to the crowd, all handshakes and smiles. And his speech struck a conciliatory theme from the outset.

“We will have to sit down and we say, let us forgive those who did this and even those who killed people here. It will happen. It is not happening today and it will not tomorrow. But it will happen.”

Then, in the next breath, the tone changed and Kiir was lambasting his former deputy again, accusing Machar of ordering his fighters to “kill innocent people, women, children, old people and everybody.” And so it went for the next 45 minutes – the president interrupting his own pleas for peace with random snipes at his rival. As he wound toward his benediction, he paused again to remind his audience of Machar’s intention: “It is just sufferings after sufferings that [his] people create.”

It was an odd note for the president to strike on a day dedicated to unity. But while reconciliation was the theme, it may be a mistake to assume it tops the Kiir administration’s agenda.

You can read the full essay here.

[theandrewgreen]

Mental health response gaps in South Sudan

My latest for IRIN:

Rebecca Athou is sitting in the waiting area of a small hospital in Minkaman, cuddling her three-year-old son. The boy developed a small skin infection around his eye, so Athou has brought him for treatment at the outpatient clinic, run by UNICEF. She believes the boy will recover quickly. It is his five-year-old brother she is worried about. In the midst of heavy fighting in Bor in mid-December, Athou, her husband and three children fled. They crossed the White Nile river and joined the sprawling, temporary settlement that has grown up in Awerial County around Minkaman. More than two months later, every time Athou’s five-year-old sees “someone holding guns he will call me and tell me, ‘There is someone coming with a gun to kill us,’” Athou said. He rarely sleeps through the night. But there is no place she can take him to get help.

Click here to read the full story.

[theandrewgreen]

Aid groups struggle to meet South Sudan's needs

For The Lancet

The first displaced fled their homes at sunrise. Within 24 hours, more than 13 000 people had sought shelter inside the gates of the two UN bases in Juba. Thousands more hid out in the city's churches and mosques. It marked the start of the response to the world's newest humanitarian crisis.

Nearly 2 months of fighting between President Salva Kiir's government and rebels led by his former deputy, Riek Machar, has ravaged much of the country's northeast. Three state capitals have been destroyed. Despite a cessation of hostilities agreement signed on Jan 23, sporadic fighting continues. The dead and wounded, who number at least in the thousands, are still being counted.

“This crisis is a major one and it's going to be very, very difficult to respond to all the needs, just because it's too big”, Raphael Gorgeu, the head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) tells The Lancet. “Everybody's trying to do their best, but it will never be enough.”

Click here for the full story.

[theandrewgreen]

South Sudan's displaced people wary of return despite aid problems in camps

For The Guardian:

Rita Stephen Cheruoe has been sleeping in St Joseph's cathedral in Malakal, South Sudan, for more than two weeks. She is crammed in with hundreds of others who fled fighting between government and rebel troops and sought sanctuary in the church. "We are here with no food, no water, no anything," she says. "Some people are crying all the day."

Despite government forces regaining control of the capital of oil-rich Upper Nile state more than a week ago, Cheruoe and the nearly 9,000 others who sought refuge in the cathedral expect fighting to break out again.

Cheruoe, who was separated from her family during the violence, is desperate to find them, but is too scared to leave. She is not alone. "[If] we see no fighting after three or four months, then people will settle," says Anthony Achuil Arop, a catechist at the cathedral who is helping organise the displaced people. "But now, there is no guarantee, because they can fight at any time."

Click here to read the rest of my story.

Photo: Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin/AP

[theandrewgreen]

Al Jazeera has launched an in-depth series on eight diseases that plague the developing world. I contributed a story about river blindness in South Sudan:

The problem started in Alison Samuel Morris' right eye. "Small dots" started blocking his field of vision. The size of the dots changed but they never really went away. He does not remember exactly how old he was when the dots appeared, although he knows he was in primary school and had to inch closer and closer to the blackboard to make out what the teacher had written.

Eventually Morris' family took him to see a doctor, where he received an uncertain diagnosis and a drug, the name of which he does not remember. His vision temporarily improved, but then the dots returned even worse than before.

His father was in the army and the family moved around what was then still southern Sudan. Morris went to three different doctors in three different town. But, he says, "every time my vision was decreasing, decreasing".

In March last year, with his vision almost completely gone, he saw a doctor in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, where he was living at the time. He finally got the correct diagnosis: onchocerciasis, or river blindness.

He also received the devastating news that the disease had advanced so far that his vision could not be saved. He remembers the words the doctor told him: "This thing cannot be treated."

You can read the rest here.