Thousands of asylum seekers from South Sudan have been stuck for months in appalling conditions in a reception centre in Gambella region, western Ethiopia. People are without meaningful access to essential services, especially food. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is worried that conditions will deteriorate even further in the upcoming rainy season.
Nyaluak Tang*, her husband and six children walked for almost one month from South Sudan’s Jonglei State to the Ethiopian border village of Pagak, where they arrived in August 2020.
“We left because of the severe floods in our district, which left us without food,” says Nyaluak. “Another reason was insecurity. One of our children was abducted by another ethnic group, and we feared for the safety of our other children.”