South Sudan’s Growing Refugee Problem: Thousands Flee Border Violence

Akech Garang hasn’t seen her two daughters since the night fighting broke out in South Sudan. “It was about 3 a.m. We were trying to escape. We were walking and running. There were too many people fleeing. At first, we moved together but then they disappeared. I lost my two children that night,” she said, standing in a crowded refugee transit center in Elegu, in northern Uganda, after a two-week journey on foot and by truck. “I cried for a long time.”

Garang is one of more than 200,000 people the United Nations estimates have fled South Sudan since fighting erupted in the capital, Juba, in mid-December — a number growing by the day as violence spreads to new parts of the country.

A Political Rivalry That Turned Into War

The crisis traces back to a power struggle between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar, whom Kiir accused of plotting a coup — an allegation Machar has denied. What began as a political dispute in Juba quickly escalated along ethnic lines and spread geographically, reaching Bor, the capital of Jonglei state and one of the country’s largest and most populous regions, where Garang and her family lived before fleeing.

The confusion many refugees describe about why the violence started at all reflects how quickly a leadership rivalry metastasized into something far larger. “I don’t know what happened because Riek and the president were in one government,” one refugee, William, told reporters, describing an attack on his community he attributes to ethnic targeting rather than any dispute he personally understood or was party to. Many of those fleeing toward Uganda belong to the Nuer ethnic group, Machar’s own community, and describe being targeted specifically because of that ethnic identity rather than any individual involvement in the political conflict at its origin.

A Transit Center Overwhelmed

The transit center in Elegu, sitting just meters from the South Sudan border, has become one of the primary crossing points for refugees making the journey into Uganda, separated from the rest of the once-busy frontier town by a barbed-wire fence. Aid workers there describe arrivals who are, almost universally, traumatized and physically exhausted after journeys that frequently stretch over a week or more on foot, often with families separated in the chaos of the initial flight, exactly as happened to Garang.

A Crisis Neighboring Countries Are Only Beginning to Absorb

South Sudan, which only became the world’s youngest nation after splitting from Sudan in 2011, now finds itself producing one of Africa’s fastest-growing refugee crises just two years into its independence. Uganda has emerged as the primary destination for those fleeing, though humanitarian officials warn the flow of refugees shows no sign of slowing as fighting continues to spread beyond its initial flashpoints in Juba and Jonglei state. A ceasefire agreement would eventually be signed weeks later, in late January, but would be violated by both sides almost immediately — a pattern of failed truces and resumed fighting that would come to define South Sudan’s conflict for years beyond this initial wave of displacement.

For Garang and the thousands like her arriving daily at transit centers like Elegu, the immediate crisis isn’t political analysis of how the conflict began — it’s far more basic: finding safety, and finding the family members lost somewhere in the chaos of the flight itself.

For related coverage of refugee crises driven by armed conflict, see our piece on the fire at Greece’s Moria refugee camp, or browse our full International archive.