UN, Aid Agencies Race Against Clock in South Sudan

The United Nations appealed for $1.27 billion to help its agencies and NGOs to strategically position aid supplies for delivery before the rainy season begins; to protect the rights of vulnerable people, including the tens of thousands who sought refuge at U.N. compounds during the fighting; and to transport aid workers and supplies to the camps housing the displaced.

"The priority is to save lives now and ensure that we have food, medicine and other lifesaving supplies prepositioned in the field, in easy reach of aid agencies before the rains hit and the roads become impassable,”  the U.N.'s Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, Toby Lanzer, told a news conference in Juba.

“We are talking about providing relief for displaced people and host communities, for refugees and other communities whose livelihoods have been destroyed. We are talking about providing emergency relief, upholding people’s rights and strengthening people’s livelihoods,” Lanzer said.

A young boy looks through the fence surrounding a safe place for children just outside Malakal. SOS Children's Villages says the children in its care need food and water, and aid agencies need more funds as food prices have spiked.

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A young boy looks through the fence surrounding a safe place for children just outside Malakal. SOS Children's Villages says the children in its care need food and water, and aid agencies need more funds as food prices have spiked.

He urged relief operations to ramp up quickly so that aid is in place before the rainy season starts, which is usually in March. The rainy season makes access to many parts of South Sudan even more difficult, if not impossible.

Seven in 10 in Jonglei face hunger

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said seven in 10 people in Jonglei state are in under "acute, emergency food insecurity."  In Unity state, nearly two-thirds of the population is severely food insecure and in Upper Nile, nearly half -- 46 percent -- the population is.

A map by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) showing the number and percentages of South Sudanese facing severe, acute food insecurity as of the end of January 2014.

Most of the looting took place in parts of the country that were hardest hit by the violence, including Bor, the capital of Jonglei state, and Malakal, capital of Upper Nile.

Looting drives up food prices

"Food right now is at an all-time premium," Lynn Croneberger, CEO of SOS Children's Villages, which has been in Sudan and South Sudan since the late 1970s, said.

"It's three-four times the normal cost so it's blown our budgets out of proportion. We need money to buy food, baby food, water," she said.

Empty tins litter the ground at the looted compound of an aid agency in Malakal, South Sudan.

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Empty tins litter the ground at the looted compound of an aid agency in Malakal, South Sudan.

"But we're still keeping the children in the village to keep them safe," she said.

Lanzer said UN agencies are working closely with community leaders and UN peacekeepers to ensure food stocks that are pre-positioned in areas where security has not yet been fully re-established will be protected from looters.

Nabeel Biajo and Karin Zeitvogel in Washington, D.C. contributed to this story

References

1. ^{^} SOS Children's Villages (www.sos-childrensvillages.org)