Three
agencies of the United Nations are warning that extreme hunger is pushing
people to the brink of a catastrophe in parts of South Sudan, as a new analysis
found that 3.9 million people nationwide now face severe food insecurity.
There
are 30,000 in dire straits., starving to death.
The UN’s
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and
the World Food Programme (WFP) called on the parties to the conflict to grant
urgent and unrestricted access to Unity State, where a newly released
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis shows that at
least 30,000 people are living in extreme conditions and are facing starvation
and death.
Since
the war in South Sudan started nearly two years ago, it is the first time that
an IPC analysis has found any parts of the population in phase five
(“catastrophe”) on the five-point IPC scale.
Joyce
Luma, the World Food Programme person on site in South Sudan, says “these people don’t have adequate nutrition, they don’t
have adequate access to food.
“In most cases when they are
fleeing and when they have moved to locations which they call safe haven, the
only thing that they can rely on are the roots from the swamps, and so they
have very limited amount of food and what we are seeing now are famine-like
conditions in those locations where humanitarian assistance, where agencies
like us, WFP, have not been able to go.”
