The threat of famine in South Sudan is most severe in three states – Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile – with high malnutrition rates already recorded in some areas. Aid agencies warn that their planned efforts be too little, too late as insecurity and funding shortfalls slow down their response.
Sue Lautze, the head of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in South Sudan, yesterday briefed journalists on the overall humanitarian situation in the country. She explained that about seven million people, more than half of the population, are estimated to be ‘food insecure’.
Most of the at-risk people, 92 percent, are in Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile States, she said.
About 1.1 million people nationwide face ‘emergency’ food insecurity, according to the UN food agency. Lautze says the classification of more than a million people at this ‘emergency’ level has raised a huge alarm among humanitarian officials.
South Sudanese farmers usually plant their fields in April and May, but many have been unable to start this year after war broke across the country.
UN Humanitarian Coordinator Toby Lanzer says the period of famine risk runs beyond the coming rainy season, when aid agencies will be unable to move supplies by road, and past the following harvest.
If people can’t make it to their fields in the next two months, he said, “it doesn’t take much to imagine what will happen when the harvest is due in November and December: There won’t be one.”
“If we miss the planting season, there will be a catastrophic decline in food security,” Toby Lanzer, the UN’s top aid official in the country, told reporters in Geneva last week. “What will strike that country, and it will hit about seven million people, will be more grave than anything that continent has seen since the mid-1980s,” he warned.
Malnutrition in Jonglei already high
About a third of children in Akobo are currently malnourished, according to survey data collected by a recent NGO mission. The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported 4 April that out of 5,485 children screened, 590 were found severely malnourished and 1,343 moderately malnourished.
“Of the severely malnourished children, 220 were new cases and the remaining cases were already enrolled in an out-patient treatment programme. Based on the screening, the rate of malnutrition appears very high. Further assessments will be done to gain better data,” OCHA explained.
Northeast from Akobo, in neighbouring Ethiopia, tens of thousands of people are crossing from Upper Nile State in poor condition, most of them women and children, according to aid agencies.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says it has relocated over 63,000 South Sudanese refugees from the border to camps inside Ethiopia. The refuges trekked from Fangak, Akobo, Nasser and other areas to Gambella Region of Ethiopia.
“Many of them are coming malnourished,” Gabriel Okautoi, the head of operations in Ethiopia, told Eye Radio FM in a recent interview from Addis Ababa.
Jonglei, Unity markets
FEWS-NET, a famine watchdog funded by the US overseas aid agency, anticipates that upward pressure on grain and pulse prices will continue in the three states most at risk.
“In functioning rural markets in conflict areas including parts of Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei states, it is highly likely that grain and pulse prices remain unseasonably high and volatile. Increased market demand from growing internally displaced populations (IDP) and constrained market supply will exert further upward pressure on food prices,” the organization stated in a special report dated 28 March.
“The breakdown in the supply chain to Nyirol, Uror and Akobo counties of Jonglei state, coupled with production shortfalls from the previous season has resulted in food scarcity and high prices. In Lankien, Nyirol County for instance, the price of a 50 kilogram bag of sorghum increased 150 percent from SSP 200 to SSP 500 in March compared to December 2013,” adds the report.
The same agency warns that food supply inflows have been ‘drastically reduced’ into key towns such as Malakal, Bor, Rumbek and Bentiu. “In a normal year, traders typically preposition commodity stocks, including agricultural inputs, in advance of the April to October rainy season. Continued fighting and uncertainty about security will cause long-term market instability in the conflict-affected areas of Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei states,” says FEWS-NET.
The report further states that the number of people classified in pre-famine conditions (IPC Phase 4) is expected to increase in the isolated areas of Duk, Uror and Akobo counties of Jonglei State, Pariang, Panyijiar, Leer and Mayendit counties of Unity State and Nasir, Baliet, Panyikang Fashoda and Manyo counties of Upper Nile State, particularly during the peak lean season from June to August.
Price stability in Equatoria
For people living in South Sudan’s southern states, the greater Equatoria region, the risk of famine is less, according to aid agencies, owing to better security since December and proximity to markets in Uganda and Kenya.
FEWS-NET says that after the December crisis, cross-border trade from Uganda picked up again by February, with 607 metric tons of sorghum recorded crossing at the Nimule border post compared to only 139 tons the previous month.
“Maize imports from Uganda have remained steady keeping maize prices stable across the country. Further increases in trade flows with Uganda are expected to accompany relative stability in the southern part of the country in the coming months but will remain below pre-crisis levels,” stated the report.
‘Famine easy to avoid’ – if ceasefire respected
FAO chief Sue Lautze, asked by a journalist whether a famine can be averted, replied: “This famine is very easy to avoid: adopt a meaningful cessation of hostilities and you will avoid this famine. So I think the advocacy message now is that that is the most appropriate course of action now.”
The two main warring factions in South Sudan, the SPLM/A of Salva Kiir and the SPLM/A of Riek Machar, signed an agreement for cessation of hostilities on 23 January in Addis Ababa. Since then, however, there have been ‘flagrant violations’ of the agreement committed by both sides, according to the peace mediation team of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
Besides insecurity, funding is another challenge, according to Lautze, who mentioned there is going to be a high-level meeting by the donors this Saturday. The logistical costs of bringing food and nutrition supplies into remote parts of the country are staggering, owing to roadside extortion and increasingly impassable roads as the rain season sets in.
WFP, the World Food Programme, has resorted to airdrops in some areas, a highly expensive means of delivering food. They have targeted populations in Maban, Ganyel, Nyal, Akobo and other areas in the greater Upper Nile region.
Other agencies are helping communities and displaced people with fishing kits or seed supplies. According to OCHA, 5,528 fishing kits were recently distributed in Nyal, Unity State. But agencies say funding for livelihoods activities and emergency nutrition treatments is limited, with the nutrition sector last week reporting only 16 percent funding for its overall appeal.
Photo: A woman holds her severely malnourished baby in the malnutrition ward of the Al Sabah Children’s Hospital in Juba on March 14, 2014 (AFP Photo/Ivan Lieman)