Security evacuation from South Sudan during lock down

One of the most prevalent challenges in this case was that as soon as the fighting escalated, the airport was shut down. Land borders were also closed; a road move was considered too dangerous given the extreme risk of troop movement and banditry.

When low level fighting broke out on the outskirts of Juba, South Sudan, it was considered an incident consistent with the risk environment. It began as a dispute at a checkpoint—five government soldiers were killed. Healix adopted our standard response, which meant sending regular alerts to clients and their employees via our Travel Oracle App. Over the following days, this small skirmish evolved into significant, directed and coordinated fighting that spread to the city’s centre. It closely resembled the unrest of December 2013 that prompted the South Sudanese Civil War.

As the fighting intensified, we escalated our processes internally by assigning an analyst to constantly monitor the situation, assess client exposure and develop advice lines in anticipation of requests for assistance. Additionally, our Africa Regional Security Coordinator reviewed our existing plans for South Sudan to ensure that we were able to stand up an Incident Management Team (IMT) if required.

Once it became clear that evacuation was necessary, our security team managed to reserve an aircraft at the Juba Airport, despite operations there being halted. We also reserved a plane at Entebbe (Uganda) and Wilson (Nairobi, Kenya) airports to conduct the remote extractions. Our evacuees were placed on immediate notice to move.

We had a fixer move to the Juba airport to liaise with local authorities and secure flight clearance the moment operations resumed. By the time we received notice that our flight had been granted clearance, security providers across Juba were quoting a lead time of four hours for ground transportation to the airport.

However, one of our consultants on the ground was able to leverage contacts and secure an armoured vehicle. The ground team was able to arrive at the client location within 10 minutes and move the evacuees to the airport 20 minutes later. Once the travellers arrived at the airport, they were immediately met by the fixer, who ushered them through the chaos of immigration and airport security and physically put them on the plane.

We received evacuation requests from two clients across four different locations. From the time the ground move was activated to ‘wheels up’ was only three hours.