FLOODING THREATENS TO BRING FAMINE TO S. SUDAN

On a scrap of land surrounded by flooding in South Sudan, families drink and bathe from the waters that swept away latrines and continue to rise.

Some 1 million people have been displaced or isolated for months by the worst flooding in memory, with the intense rainy season a sign of climate change. The waters began rising in June, washing away crops, swamping roads and worsening hunger and disease in the young nation struggling to recover from civil war. Now famine is a threat.

On a recent visit to the Old Fangak area, parents spoke of walking for hours in chestdeep water to find food and health care as malaria and diarrheal diseases spread.

Regina Nyakol Piny, a mother of nine, now lives in a primary school in the village of Wangchot after their home was swamped.

“We don’t have food here, we rely only on U.N. humanitarian agencies or by collecting firewood and selling it,” she said.

The people of South Sudan put their trust in President Salva Kiir and former armed opposition leader Riek Machar to lead during this transition period, “but now they are failing us,” said the government’s acting deputy director in the area, Kueth Gach Monydhot.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization representative in South Sudan has appealed to leaders to cease violence and ensure safe humanitarian access to prevent the dire situation from turning into a full-blown catastrophe.

The new report of likely famine is an eye-opener and a signal to the government, which has not endorsed its findings, said the chairman of the National Bureau of Statistics, Isaiah Chol Aruai. “There is no way that the government would ignore or downplay an emergency when it’s really found out to be an emergency,” he said.