South Sudan faces mass famine

As stories of suffering pour out of Gaza and Iraq, the world's newest country, South Sudan, is in crisis too.

Civil war has been raging since South Sudan was formed three years ago, and more than 1 million displaced people are now at risk of starvation.

The way things are heading, 50,000 South Sudanese children, aged under five, will starve to death this year.

"Right now South Sudan is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world," says UNICEF New Zealand executive director Vivien Maidaborn.

Yet, because a famine hasn't quite been declared, the war-ravaged new nation isn't grabbing the headlines.

Around 1.5 million people are displaced and 3.9 million don't know where their next meal's coming from.

"They've suffered terrible violence," says UNICEF's James Elder. "It looks as if you've had several natural disasters go through a place.

"Those people in the camps are living in awful conditions but feel safer there than 5km on the other side of the fence where their homes are or were, because of the conflict."

Since gaining independence three years ago, government troops have been at war with rebel factions.

Ten-thousand South Sudanese have been killed in conflict in the past seven months. Those who escape to refugee camps do so with the clothes on their backs.

The New Zealand Defence Force is there, but only barely – three senior soldiers working with the United Nations.

"This is therapeutic food that treats a child who is already suffering from malnutrition, and by providing a child with three of these a day they get all their nutritional needs met," says Ms Maidaborn. "Each one costs 56 cents."

That means only $1.68 a day.

"So when I'm feeling overwhelmed by the scale of a crisis like in South Sudan, I actually bring it right back to the plumpy nut and think, we can treat malnutrition 56 cents at a time," says Ms Maidaborn.

Cardboard straps are used on the ground to measure children's arms.

"Right now we've 200,000 children who have, who measure, in the red zone, which is severe acute malnutrition, so their upper arm is that round."

Even at hospital, there's only so much they can do for refugee families.

"We have the milk for the child but for the mother we don't have the food," says nutritional supervisor Betty Ochieng. "When we send them home because the child has recovered, they come back because they don't have food at home."

Homeless and hungry, South Sudan can't afford to wait for a famine to be declared.

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