Communications: Things that stayed with me from South Sudan

Alongside providing healthcare to communities in crises, the other part of MSF’s dual mandate is to bear witness to the experiences of those communities – especially when they face injustice.

This witnessing, known within MSF by the French term témoignage, is an essential part of the organisation’s work and requires a global network of communications professionals.

This is how I came to be on flights from Sydney to Bangkok to Addis Ababa, and finally, to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, earlier this year.

As a nation, South Sudan is deeply traumatised, with ongoing conflict since civil war broke out in 2013, just two years after independence. People experience insecurity, alongside widespread poverty, lack of opportunities for work and education. Early marriage and illiteracy are common, inflation is out of control, and there is a distinct lack of access to basic necessities, including healthcare.

MSF has been in the area that is now South Sudan for more than 40 years, and has become a significant healthcare provider across the country.

My role, as field communications coordinator in the country comms team, was to promote a better understanding among external audiences of the humanitarian crises in South Sudan, and our response there, delivered through 18 projects run by five MSF operational centres.

Since returning to Australia recently, a few things have stayed with me.

The value of speaking out

In May the comms and advocacy teams produced an advocacy report on violence in the country, particularly violence targeting healthcare. Since the beginning of 2025, MSF has experienced 12 attacks on staff and facilities, including the bombing of two MSF-supported hospitals in Lankien and Old Fangak. These bombings eliminated healthcare access for an estimated 760,000 people.

The report is important and necessary, and resulted in robust discussions with our hosts, the government. But we do not do one without the other: with healthcare comes witnessing. Speaking out is integral to MSF’s independence, neutrality and impartiality.

Global funding cuts are harming people

In Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, two-thirds of primary healthcare centres have closed due to cuts to international aid budgets. When women cannot access primary healthcare close to home for their children, common conditions like diarrhoea can escalate into life-threatening emergencies.

This is what happened to Akok, a woman I talked to at the MSF-supported Aweil State Hospital. When her twin girls started having diarrhoea, she sought help at her local clinic but found it closed. With the girls’ conditions deteriorating fast and without money for transport, she resorted to walking six hours in the 40-degree heat to the hospital. After assessment by MSF’s team, the girls were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition with complications.

Another woman, Abuk, took two boda-boda (motorbike taxi) trips of nearly eight hours to reach the hospital. Her son was critically ill when they arrived. Many others would not be able to make the journey. A lack of primary healthcare directly costs lives.

Ethical communications means sometimes putting down the camera

Working under MSF’s storytelling guidelines, we follow the principles of dignity, informed consent, and ‘do no harm’. Sometimes when I talked to patients and their families about their experiences, it was not appropriate to share their names or take their pictures. In one case a man was severely traumatised following an attack by a hostile tribe that killed 16 of his community members in a forest and left him (the only survivor) unable to walk. In another, a young woman of 16 was in labour without assistance for two days and lost her baby because she couldn’t get skilled care in time. Then, there was ‘S’, a newborn baby who had been abandoned and was being cared for by several unrelated women standing in until a home for the baby could be found.

When I look at the images I gathered during my time in South Sudan, many are with South Sudanese staff at work, or of smiling mothers with their recovering children in the neonatal or paediatric wards or the inpatient therapeutic feeding centre. But these are only the ones who reached care. There are so many more who didn’t. Other patients were too traumatised or too vulnerable to be shown. Yet they should not be forgotten.

All of your previous experience shows up

Growing up in southern Africa meant that some aspects of the way of life in South Sudan weren’t totally unfamiliar to me. In my experience, exposure to the complexities of rural and remote life, poor road infrastructure and long distances, living with limited (or no) luxuries and a lack of resources in general, all foster resilience and a go-with-the-flow attitude. Where I grew up, workarounds and ‘making a plan’ was the order of the day. This was helpful for embracing the unofficial MSF motto of ‘expect the unexpected’!

Being used to multi-national and multi-cultural teams means you are likely to get along well with everyone. In some way and at some time, your many long-forgotten life skills show up. Whether that’s tying knots, singing karaoke after hours, speaking another language (in my case, a bit of childhood Shona), or origami, your skills will enhance life at an MSF project.

MSF means a lot to people

In a place like South Sudan where MSF has been working for decades, MSF means a lot to people. When you wear the white T-shirt or vest, people know what you stand for. In one situation I was with a young woman, who had lost her baby, and the young woman’s mother, when the medical team told her that she needed to have another surgery to remove excess fluid collecting in her belly. The mother was afraid she was going to lose her daughter as well. When the mother saw me on the ward the next day, after a successful surgery, her face lit up and she reached out both her hands to me. As I was in the white vest, in her mind, I was part of the team that saved her daughter’s life. With tears in her eyes she expressed to me how thankful she was. That’s what MSF means to people.