NEW YORK CITY: South Sudan is facing a rapidly worsening hunger crisis, humanitarian leaders warn, and in the absence of urgent global action, famine could take hold in some of the country’s most vulnerable regions.
At a joint UN briefing on Tuesday, senior officials from the World Food Programme, UNICEF and the Food and Agriculture Organization described a situation spiraling out of control, driven by conflict, economic collapse and worsening climate shocks.
The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification analysis projects that nearly 8 million people in the country, more than half the population, will face crisis levels of hunger or worse between now and July. This is one of the highest proportions of acute food insecurity anywhere in the world.
Ross Smith, the WFP’s director of emergencies and preparedness, said the situation was deteriorating quickly at a time when humanitarian operations increasingly face constraints as a result of insecurity and lack of access. He told Arab News the international community needs to focus on three priorities.
“The first is really around access; there are significant challenges, blockages, denials of access, preventing us from doing our work and reaching people that are the most in need,” he explained.
Greater diplomatic engagement is also required to address the dynamics of broader regional conflicts, he added. “There needs to be a diplomatic focus on the conflict; it is not in isolation. There certainly can be more focus on that.”
Meanwhile, funding shortages are critically undermining the humanitarian response.
“We’ve had to significantly prioritize and reduce our assistance,” Smith said. “We’re about 50 percent of where we were a year ago just because of the funding forecast and pipeline.”
South Sudan’s fragility is compounded by spillover effects from the civil war in neighboring Sudan, he added, including the return of nearly 1 million people fleeing that violence.
“South Sudan itself, as a country, (is) very fragile, dealing with an economic crisis and dealing with more people coming back because of conflict on its border,” Smith said.
The FAO’s deputy director of emergencies and resilience, Maxwell Sibhensana, echoed the concerns about regional consequences should the crisis persist.
“Any prolonged conflict in South Sudan will obviously imply that people may have to move to neighboring countries, whether it’s into Uganda or into Kenya, which also are dealing with a significant refugee population,” he said.
He also warned that continued instability would also undermine food production: “If households cannot return to their homes and access their fields, (production levels) will not be sustained and even greater humanitarian support will be required.”
Sibhensana also underscored the limitations of the humanitarian system, warning that it alone can never provide enough assistance for anybody to survive on.
Regarding the specific funding needs for South Sudan, Smith said the WFP requires close to $200 million over the next six months, even under a reduced operational plan, and warned that the broader humanitarian response is severely underfunded.
The overall humanitarian appeal target for South Sudan this year stands at $1.4 billion but so far only 23 percent of the required funding has been received. The FAO has secured just 5 percent of its own $60 million target.
UNICEF’s director of emergency operations, Lucia Elmi, highlighted both the scale of the crisis in the country and the long-term human cost.
“Why should we care? Because those numbers are staggering; we are seeing almost more than half of the population affected by the current crisis,” she said.
Elmis warned that the consequences would extend far beyond the effects of the immediate emergency: “We’re talking about an entire generation (of) children, of young leaders, young mothers, who will continue to carry this burden for … years.”
