There is a “risk of famine” in the coming months in South Sudan, an East African country where historic floods threaten in the coming months, the NGO Save the Children warned on Wednesday.
The youngest state on the planet, independent from Sudan since 2011, “is on alert in the face of an imminent human and climatic catastrophe in the coming months”, according to a statement from the British NGO which assures that South Sudan is expected to suffer “its worst floods in 60 years, which will bring certain parts of the country to the brink of famine”.
The NGO is based on data from Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), a food security monitoring organization funded by American cooperation, which “shows that massive flooding will contribute to a risk of famine in South Sudan from June 2024 to January 2025.”
Those expected to be most affected have “already faced years of conflict, hunger, rising food prices, previous floods and, more recently, a recent influx of refugees and returnees following Sudan’s 15-month conflict.”
Famine was declared in South Sudan in 2017 in Leer and Mayendit counties in Unity state, areas that have often been a flashpoint in post-independence violence.
According to the British NGO, Unity State is one of the most vulnerable to famine due to flooding.
Despite its oil wealth, South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, has struggled to position itself since its independence in 2011 and faces one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
In 2018, a peace deal ended a civil war that had raged since 2013 by providing for the creation of a national unity government, with Salva Kiir as president and his rival Riek Machar as vice president, the two men at the centre of the civil war that has left nearly 400,000 dead and millions displaced.
Since then, the country has been plagued by anarchy, outbreaks of communal violence, chronic political strife and natural disasters.
According to Save the Children, around 9 million people – or 75% of the population – including nearly five million children, are in need of humanitarian assistance.
The crisis is compounded by the return of hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese refugees fleeing the brutal war in Sudan.
South Sudan is also being deprived of vital oil revenues by the shutdown of a damaged pipeline in Sudan.