Top UN officials see severe hunger in South Sudan

Nearly 7 million people are at risk of hunger, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. The U.N. reports that in the 100 days since the South Sudan conflict started more than 1 million people have fled their homes and 3.7 million are now at high risk of food insecurity.

The international community has a moral responsibility to help, said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who also travelled with Cousin to Nyal.

"One family told me they were boiling poisonous roots for six or seven days to take out the poison in order to have something to eat," he said. "These people are in risk of starvation."

James Puot, 50, told The Associated Press he walked for 20 days with his wife and 10 children to get to Nyal. He said they were eating water lilies, roots and grass while drinking water from the Nile River.

"We've been waiting a whole day for some food," he said. "We've had no water. We've spent days without water."

In this photo taken Tuesday, April 1, 2014 and released by the World Food Programme (WFP), WFP Execu …

The U.N.'s response has been hampered by some missteps. The reported discovery of weapons in a U.N. convoy on March 10 prompted the South Sudan army and government to crackdown on all U.N vehicles carrying aid. The issue further strained already shaky relations between the government and the U.N.

Several U.N agency staff in Juba told AP the cost of road delivery is now 25 percent more expensive as U.N. contractors are refusing to leave the capital with goods bound for neighboring states due to harassment by soldiers and checkpoints that charge up to $10,000 in "inspection fees" for goods to pass.

Cousin acknowledged an "access problem" but said that President Salva Kiir assured the WFP that conditions would improve. "This is one of many complications we are working to resolve," she said.

Jerome Oberreit, the secretary general of Doctors Without Borders, voiced frustration over the U.N's "strikingly slow and inadequate response." The lack of necessary funding and the U.N's "inflexible and quite complex system" has added to delays in food and medical distribution, he said.

"If we don't make use of the pre-rainy season window, we will fail in our response," he said. "People are living in appalling conditions and it's only going to get much worse."

But the WFP has moved away from earlier fears of an impending famine that would cost millions of lives.

"We don't use the word famine," Cousin said. "The consequence of famine is that people are dying. We are not in that situation and we are working to ensure that's not a word that is required to use."

• Politics & Government
• South Sudan
• Ertharin Cousin
• WFP

Source http://news.yahoo.com/top-un-officials-see-severe-hunger-south-sudan-133823556.html