6 women missing after desperately leaving Bentiu IDP camp to look for food

BENTIU, NOV. 3, 2023 (SUDANS POST) – At least six women have gone missing on Thursday in the internally displaced persons camp in Bentiu after going to the swampy areas around to look for water lilies, camp authorities said this morning.

John Tot Riek, the camp leader, told Sudans Post in his office that the women left for the swampy areas around the camp to look for water lilies, which has become the only source of survival after the June suspension of food by the World Food Program (WFP).

“Six women have gone missing in the protection of civilian site when they were going to collect water lily from floods water. They left Bentiu POC at 7:00 AM and they were accompanied by canoe man who dropped them at a site of water lily,” he said.

“But when the canoe man came back to pick them and return them to the camp, he did not find them in the location but thought that they have gone back to the protection of civilian site on their own,” Mr. Riek added.

He said the missing women include two breastfeeding mothers and indicated that they are coordinating search efforts with the camp management who he said will send search boats in order to search for the women.

“Among six missing women two of them were breastfeeding mothers with infants of three Months, we are in coordination with camp coordination and camp management to send out speed boats to Eastern part of the Bentiu protection of civilian site,” he added.

The Bentiu IDP camp’s sector three leader Kong Koang said that children of the women are in dire conditions as food has dried up and said they don’t have any information as to the situation of the women as efforts to locate them continue.

“We don’t know whether these women drowned in the floods water or what really happened to them, as we are searching, the missing mothers’ children are also in critical hunger situations,” he told Sudans Post.

The latest disappearance comes a day after a 14-year-old boy went missing. He was found alive in the water after spending at least 24 hours.

Formerly known as Bentiu Protection of Civilians (POC) camp, the Bentiu IDP camp houses thousands of civilians who had fled violence following the outbreak of the South Sudanese civil war in December 2013. Despite the signing of the peace agreement in 2018, thousands have remained owing to persistence insecurity.

In a statement issued in Juba in June this year, the UN World Food Program (WFP) suspended food assistance to South Sudan, citing insufficient funding as the sole reason.

The UN agency said that its decision would increase the risk of starvation for at least 1.7 million people.