Calls for government to do more to help South Sudan

Aid groups have called on the government to do more to help hungry people in South Sudan as global humanitarian agencies grapple with an unprecedented number of major emergencies.

The worsening food crisis in South Sudan is competing for global attention with complex emergencies in Iraq, Syria and Gaza, as well as the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa.

The government has provided $13.4 million in humanitarian funding to South Sudan since the crisis erupted last December. But an Oxfam “fair share analysis” for the South Sudan emergency - which calculates the fair share contributions of high-income donor countries to UN appeals based on relative national income – found the Australian government’s fair share would be around $26 million in 2014.

“Australia should urgently provide additional humanitarian funds to this crisis,” Oxfam’s chief executive, Helen Szoke, said.

Advertisement