I would like to add to your testimony, Mr. Morley.
I was working in some of the POC sites very recently. Those are extremely bleak places. Those are places from which people cannot leave. I'm meeting lots of youth who have been stranded in those camps, with no trees and lots of dust, which flood when the rainy season comes and are full of mud, with latrines overflowing. There are no economic opportunities for them inside the POC sites.
Those people are not there by choice. They're there because they're afraid of leaving. They're convinced that if they go out, they will be killed. As we've seen repeatedly, they just very well may be killed. The sites themselves are essential.
What I would say is that in the context of South Sudan, we have 250,000 people living in all of those protection of civilians sites. They are a vulnerable population. There are over a million IDPs, or two million IDPs now, in South Sudan. Not all of the IDPs are in the POC sites. A lot of them are in the bush, in areas that are extremely difficult for humanitarians to access, even more so because government and opposition forces are so determined to constantly hamper humanitarian aid, or to use it as a token to punish one group or another, or to enrich themselves.
The question of the manipulation of humanitarian access by the government is a very important one and needs to be addressed. It's much easier for humanitarians to access areas under government control. Most of the schools that are open are in Dinka land right now, whereas a lot of the schools and hospitals in the states of Upper Nile, Jonglei, Unity, and the Equatorias are deeply affected.
What does that mean in the long run? It means children in those areas are being discriminated against in many ways, simply by virtue of the fact that it's easier to work in government-controlled areas. I think we have to be mindful of that. Clearly, the POC sites remain essential, despite UNMISS and certain segments within the UN wanting to close those sites because they consider them as using too many resources and requiring too many peacekeepers to protect them. Despite those pressures, I think it's quite clear in the current context that the government cannot be trusted with the protection of its own population.