15th May, 2017
UN agencies on Monday said they need 1.4 billion dollars to help alleviate “unimaginable” levels of suffering in South Sudan.
The UN refugee agency and the World Food Programme (WFP) had earlier asked for 781 million dollars to support more than 1.8 million people fleeing fighting.
“The suffering of the South Sudanese people is just unimaginable … They are close to the abyss,” WFP Executive Director David Beasley said.
The UN says South Sudan situation is Africa’s largest displacement crisis today.
The world body said the conflict in South Sudan now entering its fourth year, its people are facing dire humanitarian challenges.
By the end of October 2016, no fewer than 1.2 million South Sudanese had fled as refugees to CAR, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda, while within the country almost 1.8 million people had become internally displaced and 6.1 million were estimated to be in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.
Disease, protracted instability, the escalation of violence, and wide-spread destruction have triggered unprecedented levels of food insecurity.
The UN added that no fewer than 4.8 million people, half the population, became severely food insecure due to simply being unable to bring in the harvest.
An Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan was signed in August 2015 with, after months of delay, the formation in April 2016 of the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU).
In Spite of the Agreement, localised conflicts continued, and humanitarian access and delivery remained an enormous challenge in many locations.
Less than three months after the formation of the TGoNU, the UN said humanitarian situation deteriorated drastically when fresh fighting erupted in the capital, Juba, on July 8, 2016.
Fighting, rampant looting and human rights abuses reportedly caused the deaths of over 300 people, led to the displacement of thousands of civilians, and to the incremental spread of the conflict across Greater Equatoria State and beyond.