They were minding their own business, scanning the forest for fruit, when the troops approached. Six of them, all holding guns. Victoria Peter, 19, remembers glancing at her five sisters, thinking it might be OK.
It was shortly after 10am on 15 December 2015 – the second anniversary of a vicious civil war that had devastated South Sudan.
Over the next hour, the gunmen raped the young women one by one.
Peter and her sisters were then marched deeper into the dense woodland of Western Equatoria. They arrived at a remote rebel outpost where, for the next six months, they were held as sex slaves.
“They kept at us at an armed camp, there they kept raping us,” Peter says.
Eighteen months earlier world leaders had promised such brutality would never be allowed to happen again. The scourge of conflict-related sexual violence – rape as a weapon of war – would be tackled in places like South Sudan.
The UK government had led the way with such pledges along with declarations of action to eradicate impunity for perpetrators.
Yet in Peter’s homeland things have not panned out as planned. Conflict has returned to swathes of the country; ethnic tensions convulsing a state ranked as the world’s third-most fragile and where rape is used by armed groups to displace, terrorise and subjugate.
Behind the UK-led commitments to end conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), a Guardian investigation reveals that in reality South Sudan received little funding or support to catalyse change. High-profile perpetrators remain in public office.
Eight years after Peter emerged from her ordeal in the forests of Western Equatoria, CRSV in South Sudan is still not even a specific offence.
***
Dressed in black, eyes to camera, Angelina Jolie meant business. “We’ve had enough of words – we want action,” said Jolie. For the 1,700 delegates invited by the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) to the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict at ExCel London in June 2014, the prevailing mood was optimism.
Its lofty ambition to not just prevent, but end rape as a weapon of war felt eminently achievable for many of those present.
South Sudan was earmarked as a priority country. Its brutal civil war was intensifying and sexual violence cases were running so high at the time of the London summit it would prompt UN intervention within months.
Yet documents suggest it was largely ignored by the UK’s PSVI team. Over the next five years the scheme gave South Sudan £10,000: £2,000 per annum. During the same period the PSVI awarded Syria 900 times more.
No matter. In 2022 the initiative was glossily repackaged. A new strategy launched at yet another glitzy London conference. There, the UK pledged £12.5m over three years: scores of countries agreed “concrete change” to end the horrific crime.
Again, South Sudan was identified as a priority state, one of only two in Africa.
Ten years on from Jolie’s initial call for action, most metrics suggest PSVI has failed in South Sudan. A 2023 UN security council assessment states that patterns of wartime sexual violence in South Sudan have “deepened”.
***
In a corrugated shed on the vast base of the UN mission in South Sudan (Unmiss) in the capital Juba, six organisations tackling CRSV sit around a table. The mood is solemn. None were invited to attend the lavish London summits of 2014 or 2022.
Zingorani Albert of the Rural Development Action Aid (RDAA), which helps CRSV survivors, says continuing conflict means CRSV still flourishes “unchecked” and perpetrators face “little to no accountability”.
Across the table, Mary John, the head of South Sudan’s National Network of Survivors, which represents 3,700 women and children, says far too many survivors are “voiceless” and in hiding.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) aside, its figures have indicated that South Sudan has had the world’s highest rates of CRSV. Large-scale abductions of women and children – an echo of the atrocities endured by Peter and her sisters – were increasing.
In the past year armed groups have raped women, and children as young as six. At least one woman has died from her injuries.
Tasked with tackling such depravity is a hotchpotch of community groups, committed but with little money.
Albert’s group received more than £500,000 of mainly EU and UN funding to help hundreds of CRSV survivors and children conceived after rape. A £20,000 top-up has allowed it to keep helping, but Albert says securing fresh money is “absolutely essential”.
Also at the table is Gima Robert, the executive director of the Road to Economic Development Organisation, which seeks justice for CRSV survivors and is about to lose its help from Luxembourg’s royal family. Only a handful of survivors can be supported.
“We’re managing to sustain about five of them since the grant ended,” Robert says. “Support for this year has not come.”
None of the six organisations in Juba can recall directly receiving any PSVI money.
The PSVI directly funds only one project in South Sudan, giving £331,500 over three years.
It can also be revealed that when the UK government announced the £12.5m figure at the 2022 PSVI London summit, it was not disclosed that the gathering itself had cost £4.2m to host.
The food bill alone for the 1,000 delegates came to more than £179,218. In addition, total expenditure on taxis, hotels and transport reached £471,340.
A “key tool” to delivering PSVI’s objectives is the use of specialist experts visiting priority countries. No expert visited South Sudan in 2022, or last year. One journeyed to Juba earlier this year, apparently on a scoping mission.
The PSVI promised to tackle the impunity of armed men who rape. Weeks after the 2022 conference the UK sanctioned two county commissioners in South Sudan’s volatile Unity State over CRSV.
Gordon Koang Biel and Gatluak Nyang Hoth mobilised troops to systematically gang-rape civilians. Survivors were forced to carry the severed heads of victims.
The sanctions appear to have been shrugged off. Neither man has been prosecuted and so are free to commit further atrocities. Biel remains in post.
Not long after breakfast it was 35C (95F) in Mayom, a town in Unity State, and history was unfolding.
The spartan office of Mayom’s commissioner had been converted into a court: a judge listened intently to the account of a teenager.
A drunk man had accosted her as she walked, heavily pregnant, along a road, launching an attack so ferocious she suffered a miscarriage. Guilty, concluded the judge: culpable homicide, seven years in jail.
The sentence stunned local people, some of whom had begun to believe rape would always go unpunished.
The case was among a tranche heard in Mayom during May that marked the first time sexual violence had been prosecuted in Unity State since South Sudan achieved independence in 2011.
Before the mobile court was built thanks to £1m funding from the Norwegian embassy, there was no formal justice system here.
Natalie Mazur, the rule of law officer at Unmiss, says: “Such international support is vital to expand access to justice to areas that have gone without it for far too long, particularly those affected by conflict, violence and crime.”
Yet frustration remains that it is still not possible to prosecute for CRSV. Ten years after the first London summit, CRSV is not a specific crime in South Sudan. Some believe it is deliberate to prevent senior military figures being held to account.
Sheila Keetharuth, Unmiss’s senior women’s protection adviser, laments such a “big gap” in the law.
CRSV, she adds, had “very specific characteristics” meaning it could be considered a crime against humanity or war crime in certain contexts.
Investigating in South Sudan is fraught. Social worker Sunday Mogga, who helps CRSV survivors, says she can be targeted at any time.
Mogga recounts receiving a call in 2018: an urgent voice demanded a meeting. Upon arrival she found an ambush, a delegation of senior government security officials.
“They said, ‘We know you are giving out our details. You need to stop. Choose another profession if you want to live.’”
Since then, Mogga says she has been followed numerous times. Colleagues have been attacked and beaten.
Witnesses to rape cases are routinely intimidated. Mogga wants funding for bodyguards for those testifying against the country’s armed factions at the gender-based violence court in Juba.
Cases often collapse. Collating evidence is fiendishly difficult in conflict zones. Even when proof is assembled, perpetrators buy the evidence files from the police.
Jackline Nasiwa of the Center for Inclusive Governance, Peace and Justice says: “Even those who are prosecuted stay for maybe a few months, weeks in prison. Survivors are attacked by the perpetrators when they return to their village.”
Peter’s case should have been straightforward. Peter was attacked by men she knew. “Some of them were from our villages.” But war meant zero chance of a prosecution, and there were no police to tell.
***
At the 2014 summit, Jolie admitted she had been warned that ending wartime sexual violence was an “impossible task”. Hindsight suggests that could be right. Over the ensuing decade, the world has become more brutal. CRSV cases increased 50% last year, according to a UN assessment.
Advocates of PSVI, however, say it is churlish to be over-critical, suggesting its effectiveness was raising awareness of a heinous crime. “It put the issue on the map,” says one aid worker.
The approach, they add, echoes deeper concerns within the global humanitarian model. Fewer than 1% of global aid spending targets gender-based violence.
The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FDCO) remains bullish about the impact of PSVI. A spokesperson says it had driven international action, supported thousands of survivors and helped change legislation around the world.
Since 2022, the spokesperson adds, 14 CRSV perpetrators had been sanctioned because of PSVI.
Within South Sudan, the FCDO was working on a “three-year project to break the cycle of stigma and enhance access to justice and medical care for hundreds of survivors”, according to the spokesperson. “We continue to do all we can to hold perpetrators to account.”
Sources add that PSVI funding in South Sudan has also found its way to the UN along with the Global Survivors Fund, which will shortly start supporting a project in the country.
It will be needed. Tensions are escalating. Unresolved ethnic disputes, a nosediving economy and the pressure from more than 500,000 refugees fleeing the war in Sudan are stress testing a brittle state. Elections set for later this year add to the volatility.
More international assistance is needed, says Albert – without it South Sudan’s CRSV survivors have no help. His group helped Peter open a restaurant that now funds her children’s schooling.
“I can never forget what happened, but I was allowed to rebuild my life,” she says.
Now 27, she lives in fear her attackers may want her silenced. In 2020, one of them approached her on a motorbike.
“I thought he was going to do something but he just passed by.” Any hope of justice, she adds, has similarly disappeared into the distance.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
