UN report says 100,000 South Sudanese are at risk of starvation

About 100,000 South Sudanese are facing starvation, the United Nations warned yesterday as it declared that a man-made famine is underway in parts of the country’s north-central region.

A formal declaration of famine means people have already begun dying of hunger, the UN said.

The declaration was the first issued by the UN since it announced in 2011 that famine was underway in parts of Somalia.

An additional one million South Sudanese are classified as being on the brink of famine, three UN agencies added in a joint statement.

“Famine has become a tragic reality in parts of South Sudan and our worst fears have been realised,” said Serge Tissot, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) representative in the country.

“Many families have exhausted every means they have to survive,” Mr Tissot noted, saying the three-year-long civil war has severely disrupted agriculture.

Farmers, he added, “have lost their livestock, even their farming tools. For months there has been a total reliance on whatever plants they can find and fish they can catch.”

In all, nearly five million people in South Sudan — more than 40 percent of the population — are in urgent need of food and nutrition assistance, according to a food-security update issued on Monday by the country’s government and the three UN agencies. “Insecurity, displacement, poor access to services, extremely poor diet (in terms of both quality and quantity), low coverage of sanitation facilities and deplorable hygiene practices are underlying the high levels of acute malnutrition,” the update noted.

“This famine is man-made,” declared Joyce Luma, South Sudan director for the UN’s World Food Programme.

Aid organisations have been conducting a massive relief operation in South Sudan, Ms Luma noted, but she added: “there is only so much that humanitarian assistance can achieve in the absence of meaningful peace and security, both for relief workers and the crisis-affected people they serve.”

At least 57 aid workers have been killed in South Sudan since the outbreak of civil war, the UN said last August.
Unimpeded humanitarian access to everyone facing famine, or at risk of famine, is urgently needed to reverse the escalating catastrophe, the UN agencies urged.

Further spread of famine can only be prevented if humanitarian assistance is scaled up and reaches the most vulnerable.

Failure to halt the fighting in South Sudan has pushed the country to an economic breakdown.

An annual inflation rate of 800 percent has reduced access to food for many South Sudanese reliant on market purchases, the UN said.