Five months into a peace deal in war-ravaged South Sudan, 1.5 million people are on the brink of starvation, and more than 6 million people – two-thirds of the population – are facing extreme hunger, according to a UN report. That is a 13 per cent increase on the same period last year, even though an agreement between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and rebel factions was signed in September.
At least 45,000 people are experiencing “catastrophe phase 5” famine-like conditions – mostly in Pibor and the Lakes states in eastern and central South Sudan. If there is no assistance from the international community, the UN predicts the number of people in famine could soar to a staggering 260,000.
At least 45,000 people are experiencing “catastrophe phase 5” famine-like conditions – mostly in Pibor and the Lakes states in eastern and central South Sudan. If there is no assistance from the international community, the UN predicts the number of people in famine could soar to a staggering 260,000.
Unicef, which reported that nearly 900,000 children under the age of five are severely malnourished, said its programme is just 15 per cent funded.
“If funding is not timely secured, the children we know how to save may not make it,” says Andrea Suley, a Unicef representative in South Sudan.
Surging inflation, which hit over 800 per cent in October 2016, has seen food prices soar and market produce dwindle. Although inflation quietened to nearly 45 per cent in January, the knock-on effect continues to affect impoverished families who simply do not have the money to eat.
“The humanitarian situation hasn’t shifted in the same way that the political situation has,” says Elysia Buchanan, the policy advisor to Oxfam that runs several nutrition programmes in the country. “Wages are not increasing, the prices of food continue to soar, the scale of the displacement crisis means people have been forced away from their farms. It is extremely dire,” she adds.
The return of refugees from abroad is also piling pressure on scant resources available, according to Manase Lomole, chair of South Sudan’s relief agency, the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission. He said at least 140,000 people have returned to South Sudan since the peace agreement was signed.
“As a government, we cannot meet their needs alone – we need support from the international community,” he explains.
In an UN-protected displacement camp in Juba – called POC site 3 – that lack in funding has seen food rations slashed by nearly half. The camp is populated by people from the Nuer ethnic group, one of the 60 or so in South Sudan, most of whom fled their houses at the start of the civil war in 2013. The Nuer, who have been hardest hit by the war, fear they cannot return to their villages because their homes are occupied by regime forces.
“Rations have been reduced and so a lot of moderately malnourished people are becoming severely malnourished,” says Yvonne Rohan from Concern Worldwide, Ireland’s largest humanitarian agency
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