Almost two-thirds of the population will need food aid this year to stave off starvation and malnutrition.
Juba: South Sudan is close to another famine, aid officials said on Monday, after more than four years of civil war and failed ceasefires in the world’s youngest nation.>
Almost two-thirds of the population will need food aid this year to stave off starvation and malnutrition as aid groups prepare for the “toughest year on record”, members of a working group including South Sudanese and UN officials said.>
“The situation is extremely fragile, and we are close to seeing another famine. The projections are stark. If we ignore them, we’ll be faced with a growing tragedy,” said Serge Tissot, from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in South Sudan.>
A total of 5.3 million people, 48% of the population, are already in “crisis” or “emergency” – stages three and four on a five point scale, according to a survey published by the working group.>
The oil-rich east African nation has been torn apart by an ethnically charged civil war since late 2013, when troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and then-Vice President Riek Machar clashed.>
Since then, more than 4 million people have been forced to flee their homes, creating Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.>
The UN declared a famine in two districts in February, but said that crisis had started to ease in June last year.>
“We are expecting to face the toughest year on record,” UN humanitarian coordinator Alain Noudehou told a press conference in the South Sudanese capital Juba. Records for South Sudan began when it declared independence from Sudan in July, 2011.
(Reuters)>