Famine threatens the lives of up to 5.5 million people in South Sudan,
where droughts and flooding have destroyed crops and livestock, compounding
“intense political instability”, the United Nations warned on Thursday.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP)
said it needed $270 million urgently to provide food to hungry South Sudanese
in the first half of 2020 and avert mass starvation in the country.
“Every factor is in place for there
to be famine in 2020 unless we take immediate action to expand our deliveries
in areas affected by floods and other areas affected by food loss,” Matthew
Hollingworth, WFP country director, told Reuters.
“We need to pre-position food around
the country in the next two to three months,” he said, noting that road access
to many remote communities would be impossible after the rainy season sets in.
The government declared a state of
emergency in late October in Bahr El Ghazal, Greater Upper Nile and Greater
Equatoria after months of flooding, WFP said in a statement.
Nearly 1 million people are directly
affected by the floods and the waters have not receded in many places, it said.
“The scale of the loss from the harvest is
enormous,” Hollingworth said, speaking by telephone from Juba.
Fields with 73,000 tonnes of sorghum,
millet and corn have been lost as well as tens of thousands of cattle, chickens
and goats on which families depended for survival, he said.
Acute malnutrition rates in children
under the age of five have risen from 13 per cent in 2018 to 16 per cent this
year, Hollingworth said, adding: “They have gone above the global emergency
threshold of 15 per cent.”
Displaced families flee to higher ground in K'akola village in Nyando sub-county in Kisumu, Kenya, after their houses were flooded on December 3, 2019 |
Water-borne diseases are spreading,
although no cholera has been detected, he said.
“It can only get worse because of the
situation and environment people are living in,” he said.
Civil war broke out in oil-producing
South Sudan in 2013, less than two years after the country gained independence
from Sudan following decades of war. The conflict that has killed an estimated
400,000 people and forced millions from their homes.
Inter-communal fighting still occurs
in pockets hit by the flooding, Hollingworth said.
“Hunger and desperation bring
instability when resources are stretched to the extent that makes an already
unstable situation much worse. It is a wake-up call for us all,” he said. -
Reuters
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