South Sudan declares famine crisis

War-torn country in emergency state as 5 million go hungry, and it’s getting worse

cleansing, with no prospect of peace in sight.

The fighting has prevented many farmers from harvesting their crops while hyperinflation, which reached more than 800 per cent last year, has put the price of imported food beyond the reach of many. Parts of the country have also been hit by drought.

Mr Aruai said the impact of the war, high food prices, economic disruption and low agricultural production resulted in 4.9 million people going hungry between last February and April. That number was expected to rise to 5.5 million people – about half of South Sudan’s population – by July.

“Famine has become a tragic reality in parts of South Sudan and our worst fears have been realised,” said Serge Tissot, the Fao’s representative for South Sudan.

According to the UN, famine is declared when at least 20 per cent of households in an area face extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 per cent, and two or more people out of every 10,000 are dying each day.

“The main tragedy of the report that has been launched today is that the problem is manmade,” said the UN.

JUBA // South Sudan yesterday declared famine in some parts of the country, with more than three years of war leaving about 5 million people hungry in what aid groups called a man-made tragedy.

Isaiah Chol Aruai, chairman of the national bureau of statistics, said some counties of the northern Greater Unity region “are classified in famine, or risk of famine”.

Aid agencies said 100,000 people were affected by the famine, which threatened another 1 million people in the coming months.

“A formal famine declaration means people have already started dying of hunger,” said the World Food Programme, Unicef and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (Fao).

The situation is the worst hunger catastrophe since fighting erupted.

Oil- rich South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, has been mired in civil war since 2013 after president Salva Kiir accused his rival and former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup against him. An August 2015 peace deal was left in tatters when fighting broke out in Juba last July.

Since then the fighting has increasingly split the country along ethnic lines, leading the United Nations to warn of a potential genocide and ethnic