Photo par Alessandro Rota
The Republic of South Sudan, the world's youngest state, is observing the fourth anniversary of its independence on Thursday. There is little cause for festivities.For more than a year and half, since December 2013, the country has been engulfed in a civil war that has killed tens of thousands, turned more than 730,000 South Sudanese into refugees, and destroyed the goodwill that marked July 9 four years ago.There have been at least seven tentative agreements to cease the fighting since last January, but each of them have been broken almost immediately by the army of President Salva Kiir and rebels led by Riek Machar, his former vice president. The two men, who fought together during the south's long war with Khartoum, are from different ethnic communities — Kiir a Dinka, Machar a Nuer — and the bloodshed has largely fallen along ethnic lines.Related: Armed Groups Reportedly Raped, Castrated, and Slit the Throats of Children in South SudanRebel forces, like the government, have been accused of war crimes. Last April, opposition forces attacked the Unity State capital of Bentiu, where they executed hundreds of civilians. Rebels commandeered a local radio station, from which they broadcast messages exhorting their comrades to rape women from different ethnic groups. A nearby church was used as a "rape camp," for several months.The UN mission in South Sudan, UNMISS, is now tasked with sheltering more than 150,000 South Sudanese — only about a tenth of those internally displaced — who have nowhere else to go. Originally established with an eye towards nation-building, the mission's peacekeepers are now overwhelmed, and can do little more than maintain their presence in the camps.The UN estimates that 4.6 million people face severe food insecurity. In recent months, humanitarian access has been all but shut off in parts of the country that have seen the worst bloodshed.Photos by Alessandro Rota
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