Thoughts on Hunger in Sudan

by the Rev. Debbie Braaksma
PC(USA)/Reformed Church of America Mission Worker in Sudan

It has been a privilege and a real learning experience to gather information from my colleagues and friends here in Sudan on the subject of hunger. I would like to add a few thoughts and impressions of my own on the root causes of hunger in Sudan.

Certainly unjust international trade policies contribute to hunger in Sudan. I served on the Board of the Washington office on Africa, a PC(USA) partner, for many years and gained an understanding of these macro-issues which hurt African farmers and which cause many countries to be unnecessarily “food dependent.” As Christians it is important that we address these issues as we advocate for fair trade policies. I am grateful for the work of folks like Joel Hanisek with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) U.N. office who address these issues on our behalf.

But if I look at what root causes might be particular to Sudan one word comes to mind: “brokenness.” Sudan has been at war in all but 12 years since independence in 1956 so it is no wonder that the country has been broken by the continuous conflict. It seems that this brokenness is seen in three main areas: (1) Government structures, (2) Relationships between ethnic groups, (3) Spirit of the Sudanese people.

Government structures are broken

The government in Sudan has not been able to provide basic social services such as education, clean water and medical care which all contribute to poverty which in turn influences hunger. A little more than a year ago the following statistics were released by journalist Skye Wheeler, Juba, South Sudan.

Facts and figures from South Sudan, from the Gurtong Trust:

• 135 children die in every 1,000 live births. So 13.5 per cent of South Sudanese children die before they reach the age of five.
• Only 2.7 percent of children are fully immunized. 32.98 percent of the population are underweight (both moderate and severe). Wasting prevalence is given as 22.04 percent.
• South Sudan has the world’s worst maternal mortality rate at 2,054 per 100,000 live births. 13.9 percent of deliveries are in institutions.
• The average household is 45.33 minutes away from its water source, and only 13.1 percent have any kind of appropriate water treatment.
• Only 16 percent of Southern children ever go to primary school and 1.9 percent of children are completing primary school. On average only 7 percent of potential Grade 1 pupils in the South attend Grade 1 (in Northern Bahr el Ghazal, 1 percent, and in Unity and Warrap 2 percent).

Relationships between the various ethnic groups are broken

The very nature of a civil war is that relationships with people within the same country are broken. This particular civil war is especially complex as there was a division in the liberation movement, largely on ethnic lines, which caused Southerners to be at war with Southerners, i.e. Murle against Anyuak, Dinka against Nuer, etc. These divisions were fuelled by the Northern government — the “divide and conquer strategy” was one of their tools of war. The current North-South civil war ended only four years ago ( and the conflict in Darfur is still raging) so these wounds are still very fresh and in the south of Sudan there has been considerable inter-ethnic fighting in the post war period . One of the results of this continual conflict is hunger as people often have to uproot themselves from their communities. I personally experienced this while leading a workshop in Anyidi. There was a raid by a neighboring ethnic group, 39 of the 40 participants went running out of the workshop at the sound of gun fire, and although we were able to resume the workshop later that day, for the next several days we saw residents of Anyidi packing up their households on donkeys and moving to Bor. This is happening continually and preventing people from engaging in agriculture. Twenty-eight miles from us along the Sudan/Congo border people are currently experiencing a similar situation as the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) is attacking villages and thousands of people are displaced and of course the situation in Darfur is particularly serious.

The spirit of the Sudanese people has been broken

After so many years of civil war many of the people of Sudan are traumatized, actually several church leaders have said to me, “We are all traumatized!” Many of the indicators of trauma are things which feed the serious condition of hunger in Sudan including the following:

1. traumatized people often lose interest in life — they find themselves without motivation,
2. traumatized people are often caught up in a “cycle of violence” — they have been so hurt that they are often preoccupied by the need to take revenge and they find it hard to forgive,
3. many traumatized people have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We typically find that a third of the church and community leaders in our workshops have a large number of the indicators of PTSD. Thus they are suffering from flashbacks, nightmares and panic attacks all of which make it difficult for them to live a normal life and focus on providing for themselves and their families,
4. traumatized people often suffer from lots of psycho-somatic aliments such as ulcers, chest pains and headaches which affect their ability to be productive, and
5. research shows that traumatized people often carry a “victim identity” in which they believe that because they have suffered so much, others need to support them. They feel that the world “owes them.” This sense of entitlement destroys individual initiative.

But the good news is that God is true to his promises. Isaiah 61:1, which Jesus quoted as he initiated his public ministry, states, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted ...” Most anyone who has spent time with Sudanese Christians would say that these “broken-hearted” people are especially close to God. Their stories of faith in God and their ability to trust God in the midst of tremendous difficulties continually touch my heart.

The other good news is that God has provided a way to help heal the brokenness of Sudanese individuals, communities and churches through the ministry of RECONCILE, a church-related Sudanese organization supported by PC(USA). My husband Del and I have been privilege to work alongside our Sudanese colleagues and we provide training in peace building which addresses all of these areas of brokenness in our three main program areas of: civic education, reconciliation and conflict transformation and trauma healing.

• To address the broken government structures — in our civic education program we do training in human rights, democracy and good governance. We helped people to understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens so that they can build strong governing structures that can provide good social services such as schools, health care and good security so that people can live productive lives in a safer environment.
• To address the broken relationships between ethnic groups — RECONCILE provides training in reconciliation and conflict transformation, which integrates Christian teaching, to give church and community leaders skills in solving inter- ethnic conflicts. A moving example of the impact of this was when an elderly Presbyterian Church of Sudan evangelist who came to one of our trainings said that although he came to the workshop ready to “finish” the ethnic group who killed seven of his group in their hospital beds after learning about reconciliation he was now ready to lead the effort to make peace with them. My heart sang!
• To address the brokenness of the spirit — or what we often term as “wounds of the heart” — RECONCILE is involved in training in trauma healing. We help Sudanese church and community leaders understand what the signs of trauma are, how it affects individuals and communities, how to help people get out of the cycle of violence, to help people turn to God for healing and strength and basic peer counseling skills.

All three of these program areas are interconnected as we believe that just as people who are suffering with “wounds of the heart” cannot rebuild their communities as they are caught up in a cycle of anger and revenge, we cannot just deal with trauma healing without addressing the needs for good governing structures so that people are not continually traumatized. In its work of peacebuilding through these means RECONCILE is addressing the most important causes of hunger in Sudan: the scars of the war and the continuing inter-ethnic conflicts. On behalf of RECONCILE I would like to thank PC(USA) for its support of this ministry and your continuing prayers.