 The humanitarian situation in South Sudan is very difficult for the people. The pictures you are looking at were taken in a place called Minqaman in Lake State, about 150 kilometers north from Juba. This is a very good example of what hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese people are undergoing right now. People who were forced to flee their homes because of the violence, taking whatever they could manage to bring with them from clothes to mattresses or mosquito nets in some cases. I remember having talked to an old lady about 70 years old who was extremely worried about her her grandchildren, about 20 of them around her and she said something that really touched me a lot, which was that every afternoon she would drink goat milk and that now she didn't have that and she was left with nothing. Violence took away from her the little comfort she had in her life and probably she does not even realize that her survival prospects are being reduced by the day with this situation. The living conditions in the settlements for the displaced people are extremely harsh. They are living in the open air, you can have 45 Celsius during the day and it reduces by 20 or 25 degrees during the night. I remember having seen many families, old people, women and extremely many many many children all ages from babies to 10, 12, 14 years old boys and girls and I remember seeing these children actually playing with cars they made out of bottles and tops. Playing like regular children would play anywhere and this just reminded me of how in such an extreme situation in which they are lacking every single thing they still were trying to get a sense of normality as children do. From the beginning of the violence the ICRC started trying to help these people providing them with food, with water in some very creative ways. There are places where the water is directly being pumped out of the Nile for example, trying to reach areas by bicycle, by helicopter under very harsh and difficult logistical conditions in the approaching of the rainy season. The ICRC is deploying huge logistical efforts through planes, moving a lot of resources, human and material, trying to reach the people they need. The health infrastructure in South Sudan already before the conflict was very basic and almost insufficient to provide services to most of people. The violence affected this either because the medical infrastructure was destroyed or because the medical personnel themselves became displaced people or because people were afraid just to look for medical services afraid of the violence. The ICRC has deployed mobile surgical teams providing specialized surgical assistance to people wounded by weapons and this reminds us of the importance in a conflict like this to protect and to respect the civilian population as well as the medical infrastructure and the medical personnel that are there to help these people.