Women and girls trudging under the hot sun with firewood on their heads are common sights along the road running between Bentiu and Rubkona, Unity State.

The women, who come from the UNMISS Bentiu Protection of Civilians (PoC) site, face considerable risk fetching the wood from a location far from the camp’s perimeter.

Ngalora Kueth (not her real name), a displaced woman at the camp, said she and her companions were attacked by an armed group one morning after collecting their wood.

“A group of people with arms emerged from the bush and shouted at us and ordered us to leave what we had collected,” said the 32-year-old mother of eight.

“I left everything and ran,” she said. “Those who hesitated were beaten with wire and a few others who tried to resist were taken.”

Ngalora said she knew of another woman who left the UNMISS camp to collect wood three weeks after she had delivered a baby. “She was raped and then died.”

Widowed six years ago, the displaced woman performs most of her family’s heavy chores on her own. She collects wood to cook the dry food rations, otherwise inedible, they receive in the camp.

But her family was better off at the UNMISS PoC than back home in Leer County, where they fled heavy fighting in May, Ngalora said. “There, our livelihood was damaged as a result of the conflict. (There were) no basic amenities there, including food and social services.”

The camp had its limits, however. Before the conflict, Ngalora was sending her children to school and feeding them with money she earned selling flour. But there is no school in the camp and food is barely adequate.

“Food provided here is just something we … survive on. Children are taking food without milk and soup,” she said.

Also, some days she was unable to sleep due to concern for her children, Ngalora said. “I’m worried about my girls for fear of vulnerability to sexual violence as well as exposure to bad behavior.”

Now, over a year after the conflict began, there were no clear signs of peace, she said. “It is still my dream that the situation will normalize and I am … back to my locality and able to care for them (her children) and send them to school.”

In her briefing to the Security Council after a visit to South Sudan last October, Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Hawa Bangura stressed that internally displaced persons (IDPs) faced acute protection concerns and rampant sexual violence.

Accounts of violence in Bentiu were “unbelievable” and “painful”, Ms. Bangura said during a later briefing with journalists.

The UNMISS Human Rights section in Unity has recorded 52 incidences of conflict-related sexual violence involving 116 survivors since the conflict began. Among these are attacks and horrific sexual violence against IDP women while collecting water and firewood.

According to IDP leaders in the Bentiu protection site, survivors often refrain from reporting their experiences until consequences like pregnancies or illnesses appear. They fear others will discriminate against them or remain silent due to cultural taboos about sex.

If they fail to report, surviving victims receive no medical or psychosocial support,

The national campaign on the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) in South Sudan ran from 9 October to 25 November under the theme “Speak Up”. If victims spoke up about abuses, they would help investigators of SEA support victims and hold perpetrators accountable.

To this end, much more awareness raising and activism are still needed to combat SEA in the country.

Meanwhile, IDP women dream of peace so they can return home, where they will be safer from the worst violations of their rights.