Life at South Sudan's Northern Edge as Sudan's War Grinds On
This gallery is a brief selection from a much larger body of work. The remaining images and full narrative are reserved for my forthcoming book. For commissioning or licensing enquiries, please contact me directly.
Life at South Sudan’s Northern Edge
On South Sudan’s baked northern plain, the town of Renk has become Sudan’s emergency escape hatch. Since April 2023, more than 739,000 people have crossed the Joda frontier, a colonial border drawn in 1899 that still unravels lives today. Two “transit” camps, built for just 3,557, now shelter over 50,000; tents creep beyond razor‑wire into 45 °C heat where water tanks run dry and clinics triage bullet wounds beside severe malnutrition.
Roadblocks on the trek south demand bribes in cash, gold or phones; aid groups record sexual assaults with grim regularity. Yet resilience is everywhere: children sketch hope in makeshift classrooms; Ramadan prayers rise through tarpaulin walls; flat‑bottomed barges groan southward, stacked with 600 refugees apiece—each voyage a three‑day wager down the White Nile.
Families clutch suitcases and a single conviction: “We will return, when the guns fall silent.” Until then, Renk stands as both sanctuary and pressure‑valve, its overcrowded camps a stark ledger of a war, and a border, nobody chose.
© Liz Loh-Taylor
