The United Nation’s World Food Programme requested $426 million on Tuesday, June 14 to avoid famine in South Sudan, where conflict and flooding have put millions of people at risk.
“We are already in a crisis, but food assistance must be restored to prevent people from starving and famine.”
“We urgently require $426 million for the next six months,” Adeyinka Badejo, WFP’s programme officer for South Sudan, told The Channels.
“South Sudan is facing its most hungry year since independence,” Badejo warned from Juba, the capital of the country.
“Continuing sub-national warfare, climate catastrophe of three consecutive years of floods, severe economic shocks compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine,” she explained.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, has been plagued by insecurity since its independence from Sudan in 2011.
Between 2013 and 2018, a civil war killed approximately 400,000 people and displaced millions.
A peace agreement called for the two enemies, President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar, to share power in a unity government.
However, many of the agreement’s provisions have yet to be executed, and armed conflicts between the two sides have restarted.
Flooding has exacerbated the effects of the bloodshed.
According to Badejo, the impoverished landlocked country is prepared for a fourth year of floods that might force 600,000 people from their homes.
A million individuals were displaced last year.
“More than two-thirds of the population are experiencing a serious humanitarian and protection crisis and require humanitarian assistance to survive,” she said.
“Of these, we estimate that 8.3 million people, including internally displaced persons and refugees, will endure severe acute hunger during the lean season. This also includes two million women and children at risk of acute malnutrition in 2022.”
This year, the WFP had planned to provide food assistance to 6.2 million people.
But mounting demands and insufficient funds meant that the agency in April had to suspend help for 1.7 million of these people deem to be in relatively lower categories of food insecurity.
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