Jason Beaubien  | NPR’s Global Health and Development Correspondent

Last month, I visited a displaced persons camp in South Sudan and met a woman who said she’d spent almost a year hiding in a swamp. She spent her days submerged, her head just above water. At night she’d emerge to search for food.

She’s one of the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled their homes over the past two years to escape that country’s brutal civil war. It’s hard to imagine that so many people would give up their worldly goods and flee into the bush. A new report from Amnesty International helps explain why.

The report, issued Thursday, looks at one atrocity that not only claimed dozens of lives, but sowed fear in the living left behind.

Amnesty International says that in October of 2015, government soldiers rounded up more than 60 men and boys in Leer, a town in the northern Unity state, locked them in a shipping container until they suffocated, then dumped their bodies in a nearby field. They were accused of supporting the opposition rebels.

“Witnesses described to us how the men were detained. How they were forced into this container,” says Lama Fakih, a crisis adviser with Amnesty International who spent two weeks last month in South Sudan investigating the massacre. Amnesty International interviewed 42 people who saw parts of the incident, she says. “Some [of the witnesses] were just outside the container and could hear the detainees banging on the sides of the container, screaming.”

Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese have fled their homes because of the ongoing civil war. (Above) Kids at a displaced persons camp in Bentiu. Many of the residents came from the part of South Sudan where the shipping container massacre reportedly occurred.

According to the report, soldiers opened the container to remove the bodies of some of the men who’d suffocated to death but then locked the doors again with the rest of the people inside. After 24 hours, all but one of the detainees were dead.

This incident is significant for several reasons. First, Amnesty International is calling it a war crime by the Sudanese government against its own people. Second, it occurred two months after the warring parties — the forces of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and troops led by his former vice president, Reik Machar — signed a peace accord. An international commission charged with monitoring that cease-fire also documented reports of the shipping container killing in a confidential memo dated Dec. 18, 2015. Some details in that memo are slightly different from what Amnesty International found, but the main facts are strikingly similar.

The cease-fire commission’s report said, “Between 20 and 22 October 2015 a group of Government Forces were involved in some sort of operation in Leer County, during which cattle were seized and about 50 people (reports vary between 53 and 60) were rounded up and put in a shipping container in Leer. The container is in the compound used by Government Forces as a headquarters. A large number of those people suffocated. Their bodies were taken and thrown into the bush along the Gandor road.”

The “compound” where this happened was a church.

Government troops had commandeered the grounds of the Comboni Catholic Church in Leer after the clergy had fled. The soldiers were using the church grounds as a base.

“Unsubstantiated reports suggest that the few [detainees] who survived were killed,” the cease-fire commission memo adds. “There are further reports that the only survivor was an eight-year-old boy.”

Amnesty International heard that there was a lone boy who survived but puts his age at 12. One of the unnamed witnesses in the AI report says that when the shipping container was finally opened, there was a pile of bodies 3 feet high. “What we saw was tragic … the container was full of people, they had fallen over one another and onto the floor,” she’s quoted as saying.

This massacre is being blamed on government forces, but reports from the African Union, Human Rights Watch and others say both sides in this civil war have committed crimes against humanity including raping women, castrating child soldiers, killing civilians and even allegedly forcing captives to drink human blood.

“Sadly this is one horrific experience in a long litany of violations that we have documented being perpetrated by government forces or allied militias against the civilian population,” says Amnesty International’s Lama Fakih about the shipping container incident. “And again the abuses we have documented took place after the signing of the peace agreement.”

South Sudanese government spokesmen didn’t respond to two messages from NPR seeking comment on this new Amnesty International report.

WARRI, Nigeria –  Nigeria’s governing party charged Thursday that 32 of its members have been shot, clubbed and beheaded in escalating violence as oil-rich Rivers state prepares for a rerun of legislative elections previously annulled amid fraud and killings.

Rivers state is a stronghold of the opposition Democrats. The party denies responsibility and blames the spate of killings over two weeks on “satanic cult clashes,” according to state government spokesman Austin Tam George, who is also an official of the Democrats party. He accused the governing party of “reckless and false allegations” to destabilize the opposition administration.

Rivers police spokesman Ahmad Muhammad acknowledged there had been “some murders” and said the gang leader believed to be behind it has been arrested.

The state committee of President Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progressives Congress accused opposition leaders of hiring gangsters to kill and intimidate its members. Party members are “fast becoming an endangered species” and fear will keep many from the March 19 polls for federal and state legislators in the southern state, it said in a statement.

It released a list of 32 names of party members it said have been killed, some by gunshots, several beheaded, others clubbed to death and one man burned alive.

“It is most likely that the violence is going to get worse,” warned Dakuku Peterside, who lost the governorship election in Rivers.

The 2015 presidential and legislative elections were relatively peaceful except in Rivers, where the National Human Rights Commission said nearly 100 people died.

Some members of OPEC plan to meet other oil producers in Russia around March 20 for new talks on an oil output freeze, Nigeria’s petroleum minister said on Thursday, forecasting the meeting would spark a dramatic reaction in crude prices.

Nigeria has been pushing for action by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries because the slump in oil revenue has undercut its public finances and currency, leaving the government struggling to pay civil servants.

“We’re beginning to see the price of crude inch up very slowly,” minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu told a conference in Abuja. “But if the meeting that we’re scheduling, it should happen in Russia, between the OPEC and non-OPEC producers, happens about March 20, we should see some dramatic price movement.”

“Both the Saudis and the Russians, everybody is coming back to the table,” Kachikwu said. “I think we’re very humbled today to accept that if we get to a price of $50, it will be celebrated. That’s a target that we have.”

The Russian Energy Ministry said it was ready for talks but the date and venue had yet to be agreed. “Currently, various options about the venue and date for the meeting, where measures on oil market stabilization due to be discussed, are being worked out,” it said in a statement.

Benchmark Brent futures LCOc1 were around $37 per barrel by 1554 GMT (1054 ET) on Thursday.

OPEC leader Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC Russia, the world’s two largest oil exporters, agreed last month to freeze output at January levels to prop up prices if other nations agreed to join the first global oil pact in 15 years.

Yet the accord has so far failed to have a dramatic impact on crude prices, partly because OPEC’s third-largest producer Iran plans to steeply raise production after the lifting of international sanctions on the Islamic Republic in January.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday stepped up rhetoric on the issue, telling Qatar’s ruler crude prices had fallen to “totally unacceptable” levels.

Kachikwu also said Nigeria was pumping 2.2 million barrels per day, in line with previous comments, of which 46 percent was coming from onshore fields.

He also said Nigeria’s average oil production cost from state firm NNPC and international companies was between $13 and $15 a barrel for onshore fields and $30 a barrel for deep offshore operations.

Oil prices have lost two thirds of their value since mid 2014 due to a glut of supplies caused by booming output from the United States and OPEC. In January they fell below $30 per barrel, their lowest in more than a decade.

(Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Susan Fenton and Susan Thomas)

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Dozens of emaciated-looking Boko Haram members begging for food have surrendered in northeast Nigeria, the military and a civilian self-defense fighter said Wednesday.

Seventy-six people including children and women gave themselves up to soldiers last Saturday in Gwoza, about 60 miles southeast of Maiduguri, according to a senior officer.

The detainees said many more fighters want to surrender, a self-defense civilian fighter who helped escort them to Maiduguri told The Associated Press.

Food shortages could indicate that Nigeria’s military is succeeding in choking supply routes of the Islamic extremists who have taken their fight across Nigeria’s borders. Some 20,000 people have died in the 6-year-old uprising. Boko Haram was declared the deadliest of all terror groups in 2014, surpassing the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to which it declared allegiance last year.

Nigeria is facing a confluence of troubles: dramatically reduced oil prices have pummeled a country that depends on oil exports for two-thirds of its national revenues; the Boko Haram insurgency continues to wreak havoc particularly in the north of the country, where suicide bombings (many of which are now carried out by kidnapped girls) have killed hundreds; and corruption remains a drain on the country, which ranked 136th out of 168 countries on Transparency International’s 2015 Corruptions Perceptions Index.

But amidst this, Nigeria completed its first peaceful transition of power nine months ago—to Muhammadu Buhari, who has since made some progress in reforming the military, sacking corrupt leaders, and injecting energy into the counter-Boko Haram campaign.

On February 29, the Africa Security Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion on the current state of Nigeria, featuring EJ Hogendoorn of the International Crisis Group, Madeline Rose of Mercy Corps, Mausi Segun of Human Rights Watch, and Amadou Sy from Brookings. Brookings’s Mike O’Hanlon moderated the conversation.

As O’Hanlon argued at the start, Nigeria is one of the most important countries in the world, but appears little in policy debates. Nigeria is sub-Saharan Africa’s largest economy, and security risks emanating in the country can have spillover effects. All of the participants stressed that Nigeria should factor more centrally in conversations about international security, economic development, and humanitarian issues.

Nigeria’s ups and downs

O’Hanlon started by framing three overlapping challenges in Nigeria:

• The struggle against Boko Haram, which is more complicated than a pure terror group, but has also pledged loyalty to ISIS.
• The question of reform, to include the army, the police, and the entire government.
• The state of the economy, since Nigerian livelihoods need to be improved if there is any hope to handle the first two situations.

Hogendoorn praised the peaceful transition of power to President Buhari, calling it a “stunning achievement” for the country and those who helped from the outside. However, the problems facing Nigeria—namely the insurgency in the Niger Delta, declining oil prices, and corruption and government mismanagement (at state and federal levels)—are large, he said. He argued that declining oil prices and income are impacting the government’s ability to fulfill promises, and that state governments are powerful and difficult to reform. He praised some anti-corruption institutions in Nigeria, as well as a number of effective governors who have changed corruption situation dramatically over a short period of time. But in the end, he said, it comes down to good leadership. The Nigerian people must demand accountability.

Rose detailed how things have changed in Nigeria since Mercy Corps became heavily involved in the area in 2012. Mercy Corps’ main missions there include violence reduction, education, and creating opportunity for young girls, as well as humanitarian response. While there has been progress on chronic violence in Nigeria, particularly in the northeast of the country, Rose stressed that there is much to be done. She concluded that there is not enough attention to the human element of the crisis. For example, Rose noted that displacement is common across the Northeast. The displaced are mainly women and children. In the displaced groups, the eldest becomes de facto head of household—sometimes forcing leading adolescent girls to turn to selling sex for food or money for food. Rose called on the government to address this.

Segun agreed that the focus needs to change regarding crisis response in Nigeria. In the past, the focus has been almost entirely on a military response. This has not been a workable plan, she said, partly because the “military operates above the law.” The reforms in Nigeria must have a social component, Segun argued. Lack of access to opportunity, economic problems, and desertification of major water bodies have all combined to drive farmers and fisherman from the Northeast and into the heart of the conflict.

Sy returned to the importance of economic interests in resolving the crises in Nigeria. He reminded the audience that the country is the largest economy of sub-Saharan Africa, and that is important for the entire continent. Since two-thirds of the government revenue comes from oil, the oil shock has dealt a huge blow. But there is hope for Nigeria, Sy noted. One reason is stimulus via investment outside the oil sector. There has been an increase in infrastructure spending, as well as on human development (namely in education and health). In both cases, he said the biggest issue will be implementation. Sy gave four recommendations to the Nigerian government: 1) increase infrastructure expenditure, 2) make government more lean and cost-effective, 3) increase taxation in non-oil revenue items, and 4) reduce corruption.

Overall, the participants expressed cautious hope for Nigeria despite the problems it faces. The government there still has a long list of to-do’s, but there is reason to believe that it is on the right general track.