JUBA: Nearly half of the population in war-torn South Sudan is experiencing extreme hunger, with many more set to run out of food as famine looms, government and UN agencies said Monday.
A year after South Sudan became the first country in six years to experience famine, due to a drawn out civil war, its National Bureau of Statistics warned that 40 percent more people were going hungry this year, even before the lean season sets in.
The state bureau said in a statement that in January 5.3 million people, representing 48 percent of the population, were facing acute food insecurity.
In 2017 some 100,000 people were affected by a famine — meaning people started dying due to lack of food. It was declared over in June.
“Improved access and a massive humanitarian response succeeded in containing and averting famine later last year. Despite this, the food insecurity outlook has never been so dire as it is now,” said a joint statement from three United Nations aid agencies.
Four years of civil war have devastated agriculture, while prices have soared and rains have also been unreliable. The country has also been hit by crop-destroying armyworm caterpillars.
“The situation is deteriorating with each year of conflict as more people lose the little they had. We are alarmed as the lean season when the harvest runs out is expected to start this year much earlier than usual,” said Adnan Khan, World Food Programme (WFP) country director.
The statistics bureau and aid agencies warned that if humanitarian assistance was not stepped up, more than seven million people could become food insecure — two thirds of the population.
Eleven counties are at risk of famine.
Without assistance, as of May, more than 1.3 million children under five will be at risk of acute malnutrition.
Allain Noudehou, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, told a press conference that only 5.5 percent of $1.7 billion (1.3 billion euros) in aid needed in 2018 had been received.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, was engulfed by civil war in 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his rival and former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup against him.
Violence — initially between ethnic Dinka supporters of Kiir and ethnic Nuer supporters of Machar — has since spread to other parts of the country, engulfing other ethnic groups.
The last cease-fire, signed in December, was broken within hours while the latest round of peace talks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa have stalled.
Half of South Sudanese hungry, as famine looms
Half of South Sudanese hungry, as famine looms
US Justice Department official eyes cases against Cuba leaders as Trump floats ‘friendly takeover’
- “Working group” formed to build cases against people connected to the Cuban government
- Trump’s has increasingly displayed aggressive stance against Cuba’s communist leadership
MIAMI: The top Justice Department prosecutor in Miami is considering criminal investigations of Cuban government officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The inquiry comes as President Donald Trump has raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover” of the communist-run island.
Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has created a “working group” that includes federal prosecutors and officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to try to build cases against people connected to the Cuban government and its Communist Party, according to one of the people. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the effort.
It was not immediately clear which Cuban officials the office is targeting or what criminal charges prosecutors may be looking to bring.
The Justice Department said in a statement Friday that “federal prosecutors from across the country work every day to pursue justice, which includes efforts to combat transnational crime.”
The effort is taking place against the backdrop of Trump’s increasingly aggressive stance against Cuba’s communist leadership.
Emboldened by the US capture of Cuba’s close ally, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump last month said his administration was in high-level talks with officials in Havana to pursue “a friendly takeover” of the country. He repeated those claims this week, saying his attention would turn back to Cuba once the war with Iran winds down.
“They want to make a deal so bad,” Trump said of Cuba’s leadership.
While Cuba has faded from Washington’s radar as a major national security threat in recent decades, it remains a priority in the US Attorney’s office in Miami, whose political, economic and cultural life is dominated by Cuban-American exiles.
The FBI field office has a dedicated Cuba group that in 2024 was instrumental in the arrest of former US Ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha on charges of serving as a secret agent of Cuba stretching back to the 1970s.
In recent weeks, several Miami Republicans, in addition to Florida Sen. Rick Scott, have called on the Trump administration to reopen its criminal investigation into the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by anti-communist exiles.
In a letter to Trump on Feb. 13, lawmakers including Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez highlighted decades-old news reports indicating that former President Raúl Castro — the head of Cuba’s military at the time — gave the order to shoot down the unarmed Cessna aircraft.
“We believe unequivocally that Raúl Castro is responsible for this heinous crime,” lawmakers wrote. “It is time for him to be brought to justice.”
While no indictment against Castro has been announced, Florida’s attorney general said this week that he would open a state-level investigation into the crime.
The Trump administration has also accused Cuba of not cooperating with American counterterrorism efforts, adding it alongside North Korea and Iran to a select few nations the US considers state sponsors of terrorism.
The designation stems from Cuba’s harboring of US fugitives and its refusal to extradite several Colombian rebel leaders while they were engaged in peace talks with the South American nation.
