UN begs for cash as thousands starve in war-torn South Sudan

Members of the South Sudanese army patrol the half-emptied village of Leer.

Some war-zone areas are on the brink of famine.

“If we are unable to act now, the situation will be much worse,” UN aid chief in South Sudan Eugene Owusu said on Tuesday.

“About 2 per cent of the $1.3 billion (1.1 billion euros) required to provide lifesaving assistance and protection has been received”.

On Monday, the UN children’s agency UNICEF and the World Food Programme, in a joint statement, described some of the conditions after more than two years of a civil war marked by atrocities and accusations of war crimes, including the blockading of food supplies.

A nurse measuring baby Ojum Mai, who suffers from severe malnutrition, at Al Sabbah Children's Hospital in Juba, South Sudan. Picture: UNICEF/ Albert Gonzalez Farran/AFP.Source:AFP

Over 2.8 million people need aid, almost a quarter of the country, while in war zone northern areas 40,00 are being starved to death with aid blocked amid violence.

For South Sudan, the beginning of the year is “when the country is traditionally most food secure,” the UN added.

“We are facing widespread food insecurity, malnutrition, displacement and disease,” Owusu said, pleading for an initial $200 million to fill gaps until May.

“We are facing increasing needs with diminishing resources.”

A large number of people wait for food air-drops by the International Committee of the Red Cross outside Thonyor, in South Sudan.Source:AFP

The UN-backed specialised hunger assessment, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, warned in October of a “concrete risk of famine” without aid.

On Monday, it said areas of most concern were too dangerous for experts to access, meaning it was not possible to gather the statistics needed to declare famine.

“I am staggered that things have been allowed to get this bad, and I continue to urge you, the leaders of South Sudan, to do whatever you can to ensure the humanitarian effort is successful,” said Festus Mogae, a former Botswana president, who is pushing efforts to form a unity government.

A child carries food air-dropped by the International Committee of the Red Cross outside Thonyor, in South Sudan.Source:AFP

Mogae heads the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC), set up as part of a stalled August peace deal by the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development.

A report by JMEC released last week detailed how government forces suffocated some 50 people by stuffing them into a shipping container in baking heat — the latest in a string of atrocities.

South Sudan is the world’s youngest country, breaking away in 2011 from Sudan after decades of war.

A woman from Thonyor, South Sudan, uses a satellite phone provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross to call her lost relatives.Source:AFP

In 2012, the two nations battled in a six-month border conflict.

In December 2013, civil war erupted in South Sudan when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that have split the poverty-stricken, landlocked country.

Both the government and rebel sides have been accused of perpetrating ethnic massacres, recruiting and killing children and carrying out widespread rape, torture and forced displacement of populations to “cleanse” areas of their opponents.

People from Thonyor, South Sudan, examine photographs of former residents now living in camps.Source:AFP

“Every day we spend here, I think of the children I met growing up without the chance of education, the chance of bettering their own lives denied through no fault of their own,” Mogae told leaders.

“When will independence make a difference for these people?”