South Sudan’s youth swept up in gang culture and street violence
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John Ashworth
Aug 23, 2025, 5:54:52 AMAug 23
to Group
NB: I was in Juba myself last week, and Church personnel there
expressed to me their concerns about the level of gang violence.
BEGIN
South Sudan’s youth swept up in gang culture and street violence amid
wider conflict
Government crackdown after rape video goes viral shines light on
plight of young people caught up in fallout from gang warfare and
civil war
By Florence Miettaux in Juba
Guardian
Mon 18 Aug 2025
In June, a video of a gang-rape started circulating online in South
Sudan. Filmed and posted on social media by the perpetrators, it
showed a gang of visibly intoxicated young men taking turns to
sexually assault a 16-year-old girl in a murky room in the Sherikat
neighbourhood of the country’s capital, Juba. Later, it emerged that
the victim belonged to a rival gang, and that the rape and the video
were an act of revenge.
The rape prompted widespread outrage. Some called for mob justice;
others for the perpetrators to be apprehended and sentenced to death.
There was a city-wide crackdown on gangs and within weeks the
authorities announced that more than 600 youths had been arrested,
although more than half were later released without charge. For former
gang members Peter Amule and Alaak Akuei, now on the frontline of
trying to stem the flow of gang violence in South Sudan, it was a
depressingly familiar, and failed, response to a deeper issue.
“You can’t stop this gang stuff by force; you need to use love, and to
remind them about God,” says Amule, 35.
Akuei, 24, who has set up a football academy in Sherikat, was dismayed
by the attack. “I was very disappointed and I felt discouraged because
these boys, we are working with them, we know some of them, but they
are not listening. But we have to be strong, because we cannot give
up.”
Street gangs have proliferated since South Sudan’s independence in
2011 and the five-year civil war that followed. Thefts of handbags or
phones by teenage boys on speeding bodas, the small motorcycles common
in east Africa, have become commonplace across the country, especially
in Juba, and it is not unusual to see street battles involving knives
and machetes between rival crews.
But families say young people with no criminal links were caught up in
the police crackdown, and parents were reported to be unable to locate
their children at detention facilities, as allegations surfaced of
forced conscription into the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces, the
government army that is at war with rebel forces in parts of the
country.
Since March, fighting has been particularly intense in the
north-eastern region of Upper Nile, leading to the house arrest of
Riek Machar, first vice-president, in Juba. Machar, with President
Salva Kiir, was the main signatory of the 2018 peace deal, which the
UN says has nearly collapsed.
During a plenary session of the national parliament on 28 July, Samuel
Buhari Loti, an MP from Eastern Equatoria state, expressed alarm that
the “so-called crackdown … has gone beyond gangs”.
“Now, our young people are being harassed, arrested, and some even
killed. Many are disappearing … and later appear in Malakal [capital
of Upper Nile] as soldiers,” he says. “This is deeply troubling.”
Edmund Yakani, executive director of Community Empowerment for
Progress Organisation (Cepo), a leading South Sudanese civil society
organisation, says he has been contacted by numerous families looking
for their sons.
“Information is coming out that some of them are children and have
died in the army barracks in Malakal,” he says.
On 1 August, Machar’s opposition movement, the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLA-IO), released a video of
teenagers addressing the camera in various South Sudanese languages.
Filmed at an undisclosed location controlled by the opposition in
Nyirol county, in the north of Jonglei state, the boys describe how
they were taken from Juba to Malakal after being arrested and put in
jail.
In a message accompanying the video, a SPLA-IO spokesperson, Lam Paul
Gabriel, called on the International Committee of the Red Cross, the
UN children’s fund Unicef and the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)
“to help reunite these young boys with their families in Juba”.
Authorities have publicly denied the allegations and did not respond
to a request for comment.
________________________________
In Juba’s Gudele neighbourhood, the yard of Amule’s home has become a
meeting point for teenagers and social workers from Grassroots
Empowerment and Development Organization (Gredo), an NGO supported by
Unicef.
A dozen boys aged 15 to 20 sit in the shade of a small mango tree. All
ended up in gangs due to similar circumstances: a lack of money led
them to drop out of school and join a gang to start stealing. Once
they were part of a gang, fear for their own safety and involvement in
violence make it very difficult to leave.
“For you to leave a gang, there are conditions,” Amule explains. He
left in 2016, after 14 years of gang life. “In my case, I had to buy
[the leader] a motorcycle so they could set me free.
“You take a lot of drugs, and when you do so, you won’t even care
about your own mother, because these drugs mess up your mind. You have
no limits.”
Sherikat, the Juba suburb where the girl was raped, is divided into
two territories controlled by two main gangs: Hip Hop Riders and West
Coast. In 2021 Gredo opened a youth centre on the border between the
two areas. Today, it has about 150 members.
Decades of war have taken a heavy toll on South Sudanese families,
says Gredo’s Sakaya Peter. “Most of these children come from
traumatised families. Their fathers are soldiers, and they’re either
dead or absent because they’re deployed far away.
“Some have already run away and are living on the street. Others are
experiencing a lot of abuse at home, so they come here to find people
they can speak to,” he says.
Recruiting former street children, ex-gang members or survivors of
sexual violence to work with young people is key to the centre’s
approach. “The most important part is the emotional connection they
establish with the youths, which allows for change to take place,”
says Peter.
Akuei, known as Kuku, joined a gang when he was 13. “In the gang, we
had different activities, but for me I was a fighter,” he says.
“It was like a war, but we couldn’t really tell why we were fighting
the other groups.” In 2018, at 18, he was able to pay off the leaders
and he set up the Young Dream Football Academy.
Today, Akuei trains more than 900 children, and has recruited other
ex-gang members to coach them. “We need to engage them so that they’ll
be busy and they focus on education.
“These kids, all they want is to feel loved, and to feel that they
belong. Football can give them that.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/aug/18/south-sudan-war-gang-culture-youths-conscription
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
expressed to me their concerns about the level of gang violence.
BEGIN
South Sudan’s youth swept up in gang culture and street violence amid
wider conflict
Government crackdown after rape video goes viral shines light on
plight of young people caught up in fallout from gang warfare and
civil war
By Florence Miettaux in Juba
Guardian
Mon 18 Aug 2025
In June, a video of a gang-rape started circulating online in South
Sudan. Filmed and posted on social media by the perpetrators, it
showed a gang of visibly intoxicated young men taking turns to
sexually assault a 16-year-old girl in a murky room in the Sherikat
neighbourhood of the country’s capital, Juba. Later, it emerged that
the victim belonged to a rival gang, and that the rape and the video
were an act of revenge.
The rape prompted widespread outrage. Some called for mob justice;
others for the perpetrators to be apprehended and sentenced to death.
There was a city-wide crackdown on gangs and within weeks the
authorities announced that more than 600 youths had been arrested,
although more than half were later released without charge. For former
gang members Peter Amule and Alaak Akuei, now on the frontline of
trying to stem the flow of gang violence in South Sudan, it was a
depressingly familiar, and failed, response to a deeper issue.
“You can’t stop this gang stuff by force; you need to use love, and to
remind them about God,” says Amule, 35.
Akuei, 24, who has set up a football academy in Sherikat, was dismayed
by the attack. “I was very disappointed and I felt discouraged because
these boys, we are working with them, we know some of them, but they
are not listening. But we have to be strong, because we cannot give
up.”
Street gangs have proliferated since South Sudan’s independence in
2011 and the five-year civil war that followed. Thefts of handbags or
phones by teenage boys on speeding bodas, the small motorcycles common
in east Africa, have become commonplace across the country, especially
in Juba, and it is not unusual to see street battles involving knives
and machetes between rival crews.
But families say young people with no criminal links were caught up in
the police crackdown, and parents were reported to be unable to locate
their children at detention facilities, as allegations surfaced of
forced conscription into the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces, the
government army that is at war with rebel forces in parts of the
country.
Since March, fighting has been particularly intense in the
north-eastern region of Upper Nile, leading to the house arrest of
Riek Machar, first vice-president, in Juba. Machar, with President
Salva Kiir, was the main signatory of the 2018 peace deal, which the
UN says has nearly collapsed.
During a plenary session of the national parliament on 28 July, Samuel
Buhari Loti, an MP from Eastern Equatoria state, expressed alarm that
the “so-called crackdown … has gone beyond gangs”.
“Now, our young people are being harassed, arrested, and some even
killed. Many are disappearing … and later appear in Malakal [capital
of Upper Nile] as soldiers,” he says. “This is deeply troubling.”
Edmund Yakani, executive director of Community Empowerment for
Progress Organisation (Cepo), a leading South Sudanese civil society
organisation, says he has been contacted by numerous families looking
for their sons.
“Information is coming out that some of them are children and have
died in the army barracks in Malakal,” he says.
On 1 August, Machar’s opposition movement, the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLA-IO), released a video of
teenagers addressing the camera in various South Sudanese languages.
Filmed at an undisclosed location controlled by the opposition in
Nyirol county, in the north of Jonglei state, the boys describe how
they were taken from Juba to Malakal after being arrested and put in
jail.
In a message accompanying the video, a SPLA-IO spokesperson, Lam Paul
Gabriel, called on the International Committee of the Red Cross, the
UN children’s fund Unicef and the UN mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)
“to help reunite these young boys with their families in Juba”.
Authorities have publicly denied the allegations and did not respond
to a request for comment.
________________________________
In Juba’s Gudele neighbourhood, the yard of Amule’s home has become a
meeting point for teenagers and social workers from Grassroots
Empowerment and Development Organization (Gredo), an NGO supported by
Unicef.
A dozen boys aged 15 to 20 sit in the shade of a small mango tree. All
ended up in gangs due to similar circumstances: a lack of money led
them to drop out of school and join a gang to start stealing. Once
they were part of a gang, fear for their own safety and involvement in
violence make it very difficult to leave.
“For you to leave a gang, there are conditions,” Amule explains. He
left in 2016, after 14 years of gang life. “In my case, I had to buy
[the leader] a motorcycle so they could set me free.
“You take a lot of drugs, and when you do so, you won’t even care
about your own mother, because these drugs mess up your mind. You have
no limits.”
Sherikat, the Juba suburb where the girl was raped, is divided into
two territories controlled by two main gangs: Hip Hop Riders and West
Coast. In 2021 Gredo opened a youth centre on the border between the
two areas. Today, it has about 150 members.
Decades of war have taken a heavy toll on South Sudanese families,
says Gredo’s Sakaya Peter. “Most of these children come from
traumatised families. Their fathers are soldiers, and they’re either
dead or absent because they’re deployed far away.
“Some have already run away and are living on the street. Others are
experiencing a lot of abuse at home, so they come here to find people
they can speak to,” he says.
Recruiting former street children, ex-gang members or survivors of
sexual violence to work with young people is key to the centre’s
approach. “The most important part is the emotional connection they
establish with the youths, which allows for change to take place,”
says Peter.
Akuei, known as Kuku, joined a gang when he was 13. “In the gang, we
had different activities, but for me I was a fighter,” he says.
“It was like a war, but we couldn’t really tell why we were fighting
the other groups.” In 2018, at 18, he was able to pay off the leaders
and he set up the Young Dream Football Academy.
Today, Akuei trains more than 900 children, and has recruited other
ex-gang members to coach them. “We need to engage them so that they’ll
be busy and they focus on education.
“These kids, all they want is to feel loved, and to feel that they
belong. Football can give them that.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/aug/18/south-sudan-war-gang-culture-youths-conscription
END
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
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