Panrieng consists of small villages (Boma) and it is located in Unity State, South Sudan, where many of the current oil fields in South Sudan are found. It belongs to and is a home to the Panruu people; an Agro-pastoralists group belonging to the Dinka (Jieng) ethnic group.

Since the discovery of oil deposits by the American company, Chevron, in the late 1970s and throughout the Sudan’s 22 years civil war, Panrieng has been a frontline and a bleeding edge given its’ proximity to the south-north border, and as a result, Panaruu people have suffered untold and unimaginable loss of lives and destruction of properties by the government of Sudan, which adopted a scorched earth policy of exterminating and displacing indigenous people around Panrieng to allow way for exploration and production of oil.

Like any of the other Dinka groups and other ethnic groups in South Sudan, Panaruu people’s livelihood depends solely on livestock and subsistent agriculture. However, all of these resources were destroyed by the Khartoum government during the civil war and the survivors were forced to flee their villages to seek refuge in the internally displaced camps in Khartoum or other refugee camps in the neighboring countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda.

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