JUBA: At 14 months, Adut Duor should be walking. Instead, his spine juts through his skin and his legs dangle like sticks from his mother’s lap in a South Sudan hospital. At half the size of a healthy baby his age, he is unable to walk.
Adut’s mother, Ayan, couldn’t breastfeed her fifth child, a struggle shared by the 1.1 million pregnant and lactating women who are malnourished in the east African country.
“If I had a blessed life and money to feed him, he would get better,” Ayan said at a state hospital in Bor, 200 kilometers (124 miles) from the capital, Juba.
A recent UN-backed report projects that about 2.3 million children under 5 in South Sudan now require treatment for acute malnutrition, with over 700,000 of those in severe condition. The report attributes the rising numbers to renewed conflict in the northern counties and reduced humanitarian assistance.
Independent since 2011, South Sudan has been crippled by violence and poor governance. United Nations investigators recently accused authorities of looting billions of dollars in public funds, as 9 million of South Sudan’s almost 12 million people rely on humanitarian assistance. Now, funding cuts, renewed violence, climate change and entrenched corruption are converging to deepen the unfolding hunger crisis.
Funding cuts
In the basic ward at the hospital in Bor, dozens of mothers cradle frail children. Malnutrition cases have more than doubled this year, a crisis worsened by recent staff cuts. Funding cuts this spring forced Save the Children to lay off 180 aid staff, including 15 nutrition workers who were withdrawn from Bor in May.
Funding cuts have also hit supplies of ready-to-use therapeutic food, RUTF, the peanut paste that has been a lifeline for millions of children around the world. USAID once covered half global production, but Action Against Hunger’s Country Director Clement Papy Nkubizi warns stocks are now running dangerously low.
“Twenty-two percent of children admitted for malnutrition at Juba’s largest children’s hospital have died of hunger,” Nkubizi said. “Triangulating this to the field… there are many children who are bound to die.”
He explains that families now walk for hours to reach support after the organization closed 28 malnutrition centers. UNICEF says more than 800 (66 percent) of malnutrition sites nationwide report reduced staffing.
Violence hampering aid delivery
Violence in South Sudan’s northern states has compounded the crisis, blocking humanitarian access and driving hundreds of thousands from their farmland.
Although a 2018 peace deal ended the country’s five-year civil war, renewed clashes between the national army and militia groups raise fears of a return to large-scale conflict. In Upper Nile State, where the violence has resurged, malnutrition levels are the highest.
The UN said intensified fighting along the white Nile River meant no supplies reached the area for over a month in May, plunging more than 60,000 already malnourished children into deeper hunger.
In June, the South Sudanese government told The Associated Press it turned to US company Fogbow for airdrops to respond to needs in areas hit by violence. Although the company claims to be a humanitarian force, UN workers question the departure from the established system.
Global humanitarian group Action Against Hunger had to abandon warehouses and operations in Fangak, Jonglei State, after an aerial bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital left seven dead in May.
“Our sites in these locations are now also flooded, submerged as we speak,” said Nkubizi.
Around 1.6 million people are at risk of displacement from flooding, as submerged farmland and failed harvests compound hunger in the climate-vulnerable country.
“Malnutrition is not just about food insecurity — cholera outbreaks, malaria and poor sanitation compound the problem,” says Shaun Hughes, the World Food Program’s regional emergency coordinator.
With more than 60 percent of the population defecating in the open, flooding turns contaminated water into a major health threat.
No nutritional support
At Maban County Hospital near the northern border with Sudan, 8-month-old Moussa Adil cries with hunger in his mother’s arms.
Moussa’s nutritionist, Butros Khalil, says there’s no supplementary milk for the frail child that evening. The hospital received its last major consignment in March.
US funding cuts forced international aid groups to reduce support to this hospital. Khalil and dozens of colleagues have not been paid for six months. “Now we are just eating leaves from the bush,” he says, describing how the exorbitant cost of living makes it impossible to feed his 20-person family.
The neighboring war in Sudan has disrupted trade and driven up the cost of basic goods. Combined with soaring inflation, the economic pressure means 92 percent of South Sudanese live below the poverty line — a 12 percent increase from last year, according to the African Development Bank.
“People pull their kids out of school, they sell their cattle just to make ends meet, then they become the hungry people,” says Hughes.
Action Against Hunger says it had to halt school feeding after US funding was withdrawn, raising fears of children slipping from moderate to dangerous hunger levels.
In Maban’s camps near the Sudan border, refugees say WFP cash and dry food handouts no longer cover basic needs. With rations halved and over half the area’s population removed from the eligibility list, many face hunger — some even consider returning to war-torn Sudan.
Critics say years of aid dependence have exposed South Sudan. The government allocates just 1.3 percent of its budget to health — far below the 15 percent target set by the World Health Organization, according to a recent UNICEF report. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the health care system is funded by foreign donors.
Corruption
The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan recently said billions of dollars had been lost to corruption, as public officials diverted revenue. The government called the allegations “absurd.”
Committee member Barney Afako said leaders were “breaching international laws which oblige governments to apply maximum available resources to realize the rights to food, health and education.”
The Commission Chairperson, Yasmin Sooka, said the funds siphoned off by elites could have built schools, staffed hospitals and secured food for the South Sudanese people.
“Corruption is killing South Sudanese. It’s not incidental — it’s the engine of South Sudan’s collapse, hollowing out its economy, gutting institutions, fueling conflict, and condemning its people to hunger and preventable death,” she said.
As the international community warns of a worsening crisis, it has already reached the hospital floors of South Sudan and the frail frames of children like Moussa and Adut.
‘Children are bound to die’: Corruption, aid cuts and violence fuel a hunger crisis in South Sudan
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‘Children are bound to die’: Corruption, aid cuts and violence fuel a hunger crisis in South Sudan
- The report attributes the rising numbers to renewed conflict in the northern counties and reduced humanitarian assistance
- Now, funding cuts, renewed violence, climate change, and entrenched corruption are converging to deepen the unfolding hunger crisis
Israeli military raids in Syria raise tensions as they carve out a buffer zone
- Syria’s interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who led the rebels who took over the country, said he has no desire for a conflict with Israel
- Damascus has struggled to push Israel diplomatically to stop its attacks and pull its troops out of a formerly United Nations-patrolled buffer zone
BEIRUT: Qassim Hamadeh woke to the sounds of gunfire and explosions in his village of Beit Jin in southwestern Syria last month. Within hours, he had lost two sons, a daughter-in-law and his 4-year-old and 10-year-old grandsons. The five were among 13 villagers killed that day by Israeli forces.
Israeli troops had raided the village — not for the first time — seeking to capture, as they said, members of a militant group planning attacks into Israel. Israel said militants opened fire at the troops, wounding six, and that troops returned fire and brought in air support.
Hamadeh, like others in Beit Jin, dismissed Israel’s claims of militants operating in the village. The residents said armed villagers confronted Israeli soldiers they saw as invaders, only to be met with Israeli tank and artillery fire, followed by a drone strike. The government in Damascus called it a “massacre.”
The raid and similar recent Israeli actions inside Syria have increased tensions, frustrated locals and also scuttled chances — despite US pressure — of any imminent thaw in relations between the two neighbors.
An expanding Israeli presence
An Israeli-Syria rapprochement seemed possible last December, after Sunni Islamist-led rebels overthrew autocratic Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran, Israel’s archenemy.
Syria’s interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who led the rebels who took over the country, said he has no desire for a conflict with Israel. But Israel was suspicious, mistrusting Al-Sharaa because of his militant past and his group’s history of aligning with Al-Qaeda.
Israeli forces quickly moved to impose a new reality on the ground. They mobilized into the UN-mandated buffer zone in southern Syria next to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed — a move not recognized by most of the international community.
Israeli forces erected checkpoints and military installations, including on a hilltop that overlooks wide swaths of Syria. They set up landing pads on strategic Mt. Hermon nearby. Israeli reconnaissance drones frequently fly over surrounding Syrian towns, with residents often sighting Israeli tanks and Humvee vehicles patrolling those areas.
Israel has said its presence is temporary to clear out pro-Assad remnants and militants — to protect Israel from attacks. But it has given no indication its forces would leave anytime soon. Talks between the two countries to reach a security agreement have so far yielded no result.
Ghosts of Lebanon and Gaza
The events in neighboring Lebanon, which shares a border with both Israel and Syria, and the two-year war in Gaza between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas have also raised concerns among Syrians that Israel plans a permanent land grab in southern Syria.
Israeli forces still have a presence in southern Lebanon, over a year since a US-brokered ceasefire halted the latest Israel-Hezbollah war. That war began a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas.
Israel’s operations in Lebanon, which included bombardment across the tiny country and a ground incursion last year, have severely weakened Hezbollah.
Today, Israel still controls five hilltop points in southern Lebanon, launches near-daily airstrikes against alleged Hezbollah targets and flies reconnaissance drones over the country, sometimes also carrying out overnight ground incursions.
In Gaza, where US President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire deal has brought about a truce between Israel and Hamas, similar buffer zones under Israeli control are planned even after Israel eventually withdraws from the more than half of the territory it still controls.
At a meeting of regional leaders and international figures earlier this month in Doha, Qatar, Al-Sharaa accused Israel of using imagined threats to justify aggressive actions.
“All countries support an Israeli withdrawal” from Syria to the lines prior to Assad’s ouster, he said, adding that it was the only way for both Syria and Israel to “emerge in a state of safety.”
Syria’s myriad problems
The new leadership in Damascus has had a multitude of challenges since ousting Assad.
Al-Sharaa’s government has been unable to implement a deal with local Kurdish-led authorities in northeast Syria, and large areas of southern Sweida province are now under a de facto administration led by the Druze religious minority, following sectarian clashes there in mid-July with local Bedouin clans.
Syrian government forces intervened, effectively siding with the Bedouins. Hundreds of civilians, mostly Druze, were killed, many by government fighters. Over half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights.
Israel, which has cast itself as a defender of the Druze, though many of them in Syria are critical of its intentions, has also made overtures to Kurds in Syria.
“The Israelis here are pursuing a very dangerous strategy,” said Michael Young, Senior Editor at the Beirut-based Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
It contradicts, he added, the positions of Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Egypt — and even the United States — which are “all in agreement that what has to come out of this today is a Syrian state that is unified and fairly strong,” he added.
Israel and the US at odds over Syria
In a video released from his office after visiting Israeli troops wounded in Beit Jin, barely 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the edge of the UN buffer zone, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel seeks a “demilitarized buffer zone from Damascus to the (UN) buffer zone,” including Mt. Hermon.
“It is also possible to reach an agreement with the Syrians, but we will stand by our principles in any case,” Netanyahu said.
His strategy has proven to be largely unpopular with the international community, including with Washington, which has backed Al-Sharaa’s efforts to consolidate his control across Syria.
Israel’s operations in southern Syria have drawn rare public criticism from Trump, who has taken Al-Sharaa, once on Washington’s terror list, under his wing.
“It is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria, and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social after the Beit Jin clashes.
Syria is also expected to be on the agenda when Netanyahu visits the US and meets with Trump later this month.
Experts doubt Israel will withdraw from Syria anytime soon — and the new government in Damascus has little leverage or power against Israel’s much stronger military.
“If you set up landing pads, then you are not here for short-term,” Issam Al-Reiss, a military adviser with the Syrian research group ETANA, said of Israeli actions.
Hamadeh, the laborer from Beit Jin, said he can “no longer bear the situation” after losing five of his family.
Israel, he said, “strikes wherever it wants, it destroys whatever it wants, and kills whoever it wants, and no one holds it accountable.”
