[Pursuant to a motion adopted by the subcommittee on March 7, 2017, Mr. Jeremy Hopkins’ speaking notes have been appended to the Evidence for this meeting. See appendix—Talking Points- Jeremy Hopkins]
Let me walk you through what I have for you and if you decide it's something that's not appropriate and you want me to get into the details, please let me know.
I am the new person for South Sudan, just temporarily so and not for very long. Therefore, I'm not [Technical difficulty—Editor] but I'll give you an update. Right now I'm actually in a small town called Yei in the south of the country, which is one of the towns where we are most concerned about the human rights situation.
Just to recap very quickly [Technical difficulty—Editor] conflict that started in 2013 and then was renewed in July 2016 having a big impact [Technical difficulty—Editor] situation. Between 2013 and then last year, we estimate about 3.2 million people have been displaced and over one million have fled the country.
Apparently [Technical difficulty—Editor] approximately seven million people are in need of some form of assistance. The country is in economic crisis situation with an inflation rate of over 800% [Technical difficulty—Editor].
Children, who make up over half the population here, are facing many risks. Malnutrition is the big one, and you may have heard about the famine that was declared yesterday. The famine itself is only part of a bigger picture and is actually only in a small part of the country. However, approximately five million people, half the population, are food insecure and 1.1 million children are malnourished—I beg your pardon, 1.1 million children are acutely malnourished of whom 276,000 are severely acutely malnourished. That means that for the ones [Technical difficulty—Editor] are not treated clinically for malnutrition, they stand a very good chance of dying of either [Technical difficulty—Editor] or as simple as diarrhea, measles, or flu.
Other challenges that children are facing right now are killer diseases that affect children in poorer countries but don't touch children in rich countries, such as [Technical difficulty—Editor]. There are a number of rights violations going on. In general terms they include forced marriages, recruitment into armed groups, abduction, killing, maiming, an awful lot of sexual violence and gender-based violence [Technical difficulty—Editor] rape, and more than half of the children have left school. They've wandered off.
Now, UNICEF is charged under Security Council resolution 1612 to monitor grave child rights violations of which there are five or six. They are killing and maiming, abduction and recruitment, rape, attacks on schools and hospitals, denial of humanitarian access. During 2016 we just had 900 incidents of grave child rights violations. There are many more, but 900 were those we were able to translate and confirm they took place and [Technical difficulty].
In the last couple of years we have confirmed that 1,800 children who have died directly of the conflict, and sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war [Technical difficulty—Editor]. There are constant reports of women and girls being raped by individuals from [Technical difficulty—Editor].
In terms of the treatment of children, we know that 17,000 children are currently with armed groups serving in some sort of capacity. Child recruitment is active and continues. We have documented 1,300 children being recruited last year. In terms of [Technical difficulty—Editor] children are separated from their families, when they were fleeing the conflict. What typically happens is that an armed group will come in and burn the village [Technical difficulty—Editor] and the families run. In this situation, the children are separated.
We have just around 15,000 children who identified as separated or unaccompanied, and we are working to search for families and reunite them.
In terms of gender-based violence specifically, it really seems to have gotten very bad in the last few months, since the July crisis. To our knowledge it is being perpetrated by all parties to the conflict. It's difficult to get documentation on this, of course, but there are lots of [Technical difficulty—Editor] on it, especially around Yei, the town I'm in right now, which is a rather curious situation. The town is under the control of the government, and outside the town—literally [Technical difficulty—Editor] outside—there is a series of checkpoints. Then there is a no man's land, then a few kilometres later there is [Technical difficulty—Editor] controlled by the opposition, and then, if you go further out, it's back in the control of the government. So it's very difficult to access.
[Technical difficulty—Editor] to try to get to Uganda, to the refugee camps there, and a few try it and come back in. Crossing the no man's land area, [Technical difficulty—Editor] the possibility of being found, and if they are women they are raped, gang-raped, and if they're men they are often killed or tortured.
So that's the sort of situation we're in. Children, of course, are a big part of it. You know, this is two or three years of conflict, and it takes its toll on children. It's difficult to cope with [Technical difficulty—Editor], but the psychosocial aspect of children [Technical difficulty—Editor] is horribly compromised.
Now, I'll just talk very quickly about the sorts of things that UNICEF is doing, just so you get a sense of how we are engaged there. We have a three-part mandate: one on the advocacy side, one on human rights, and one on the provision of social services. I mentioned that we have resolution 1612, which charged us to [Technical difficulty—Editor] monitoring and reporting mechanism, MRM. We do have it up and running [Technical difficulty—Editor]. We try to document these violations and advocate to the parties of the conflict through state action.
Until recently we were doing reasonably well [Technical difficulty—Editor]. We were able to get 1,900 children released from armed groups in 2015, and then in 2016 we got 155 children released from another armed group in the conflict. We've also reunited about 5,000 children with their families [Technical difficulty—Editor] during the conflict. We train teachers and social workers on site in social support and how to provide that to children. We've reached about 300,000 children, but that is very light support; it's not what it should be.
In terms of gender-based violence, [Technical difficulty—Editor] and support victims and survivors, we are working with the help of [Technical difficulty—Editor] and social workers [Technical difficulty—Editor] they understand the issue and are able to [Technical difficulty—Editor], which is not nearly enough, frankly.
[Technical difficulty—Editor], where those people are gathered [Technical difficulty—Editor] which are under the protection of the UN, but there's [Technical difficulty—Editor] with the camp managers to make sure that we can tweak the way the camps are run in favour of women and help them be more protected from [Technical difficulty—Editor] just outside them. For example, whether it be toilets, street lighting, or [Technical difficulty—Editor].
We face a number of challenges, and I'll just run through those, if I can. Access is the single biggest challenge that we face. In the area where I am now, if you get to the town, you cannot go [Technical difficulty—Editor]. I'll have to fly out of here, even though it's just a three-hour trip to Juba. This is really impacting on our ability to fulfill our mandate and this is [Technical difficulty—Editor] for all parts of the UN.
One way we might get around that is to do something called rapid response mechanisms. We literally fly in a team of professionals into such areas that we can't access either because we can't pass through the [Technical difficulty—Editor] or because of the terrain. It's a huge country with very limited infrastructure. When you have professionals there for two or three days, they review, and treat, and screen. They track through as many people as they can [Technical difficulty—Editor] on the human rights side. [Technical difficulty—Editor] it's not safe for the people to go out there for too long.
Now, the other challenge, then, is just the general logistics, infrastructure, which is appalling here. When you get to the end of the dry season and the rain starts, even a larger part of the country becomes inaccessible.
In terms of [Technical difficulty—Editor], they're not very badly funded. But I must say the child protection program, which is the one that deals with human rights and child rights as part of their programming is not as well funded as some of the others. The typical emergency response on nutrition and health, and this sort of thing, is reasonably well funded. Of course, we would welcome more, in short, because we have a critical gap, especially on that population of separated children.
I mentioned the figure of [Technical difficulty—Editor]. If we had more funding we would [Technical difficulty—Editor] every child involved.
I know that the Canadian government has strong support for UNICEF, and I know that's not what why we're [Technical difficulty—Editor] the Canadian government for their support, specifically for the child protection programs around child rights in South Sudan, on both the [Technical difficulty—Editor] and the Children, Not Soldiers campaign, which are related to [Technical difficulty—Editor]. So I just want to make the connection there.
That is what I had prepared for you. [Technical difficulty—Editor].
Thank you.