South Sudan will starve without help, UN warns

GENEVA — South Sudan needs $230 million in international aid in the next 60 days or it will face the worst starvation in Africa since the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands of people died in Ethiopia’s famine, the UN official coordinating humanitarian aid in South Sudan warned Thursday.

“We’re in a race against time,” the coordinator, Toby Lanzer, told reporters in Geneva. In a stark message to world leaders, he said, “Invest now or pay later.”

About 3.7 million people, close to one-third of the total population, are already at severe risk of starvation in South Sudan, a crisis now ranked by the United Nations on par with Syria’s, Lanzer said. He appealed for only the most essential needs — food, water, seeds, and farming tools — to allow the South Sudanese to plant crops before the end of May, when rains bring the planting season to an end. Full story for BostonGlobe.com subscribers.^[1]

References

1. ^{^} Full story for BostonGlobe.com subscribers. (www.bostonglobe.com)