As Needs Surge and Funding Collapses, South Sudan Faces Its Most Dangerous Humanitarian Moment in Years

Palais Briefing Note

GENEVA – Good morning to you all. So I am here today to give a briefing on what we are seeing  as a fairly catastrophic situation unfolding across South Sudan.

Simply put, South Sudan today is facing a sort of a collision of crises, plural, just as the humanitarian resources are starting to run out. I was the country director for the World Food Programme in South Sudan for three years. I left in 2022. And since my departure until the one-week mission I took part in last week, the situation has deteriorated enormously.

Across the whole country, conflict, displacement, economic hardship, climate shocks, and the situation in neighbouring Sudan are all converging to push millions of people deeper into vulnerability. At the same time, as I say, we're seeing not just the World Food Programme's humanitarian assistance, but all actors, humanitarian assistance in the country, rapidly declining in scale. 

7.8 million people today, more than half the country's population, struggle to find food each day. 2.2 million children and 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding mothers require urgent nutrition support. Unless additional resources are secured, more than one million vulnerable people could lose access to life saving food and nutrition assistance by October. So this is looming.

South Sudan is also bearing the consequences of the conflict in neighbouring Sudan. Every week, around 3,000 refugees and returnees cross the border seeking safety, food, water and shelter. During my visit last week in Renk, I met women and children and older people who travelled for days on foot, sometimes weeks, escaping violence and uncertainty in order to get to South Sudan, you know, genuinely out of the frying pan into the fire. Many have lost their homes. Most, if not all, have lost their livelihoods and belongings. Sadly, many had lost loved ones. And yet they are arriving, as I say, into communities that are already struggling significantly to feed themselves and look after themselves.

One of the women I met, a lady by the name of Hapsa Hassan, a mother of four, who had recently arrived in Renk in the transit camp, fled Blue Nile State, Damazin. And having walked almost 200 kilometres, she reached the transit camp absolutely exhausted, extremely hungry as were her children, and genuinely uncertain as to what lay ahead of her. 

She did receive food assistance from WFP, she received nutrition support from UNICEF for her children, but frankly it just wasn't and isn't enough to meet her needs. And now, sadly, she's going to rely on the generosity of neighbours and friends and host communities to support her, families and other communities that don't have enough themselves, facing similar kinds of hardships and increasing pressure because of the new arrivals into those transit centres and indeed, ultimately, refugee camps. She spoke of impossible choices that women and girls are being forced to take each day to look for food and basic necessities.

Her biggest concern that she raised with me was the safety of her teenage daughter, who she knows is going to need to leave the transit camp on a daily basis to look for work, to look for food, and to take risks that no young girl should be taking and should ever have to face. perhaps a story for me at least was a really stark reminder of the protection risks and the vulnerabilities confronting displaced families as they struggle to survive. 

Over the last three years the World Food Programme and partners have indeed provided food and cash and nutrition assistance to refugees and an increasing number of South Sudanese returnees going into already vulnerable communities. The assistance has been a lifeline. Today it is at risk.

I was in Malakal as well during my visit, visiting one of what was the largest logistics hubs that we had in the northern part of South Sudan, where we would feed half a million people across the greater Upper Nile region with life-saving support. Last year in Malakal at this time, we had 10,000 metric tons of food positioned, ready to go the moment the rainy season withdrew so that we could get food out to areas as they became accessible as we identified vulnerability. Today, there's less than 300 metric tons of food in that same complex, not because the numbers have fallen, not because there's less need, not because things have improved, but because simply put, humanitarian agencies just don't have the resources anymore, anymore that they once had.

Access and safety, or lack thereof, is compounding this crisis. Humanitarian food that gets transported along the Nile, commercial food and other materials that get transported along the River Nile, face illegal checkpoints and illegal taxation by soldiers across the entirety of the journeys that they take. This increases operational costs, it slows down the delivery of assistance.

And for many traders, it's become so much that it's prohibiting their ability and desire to continue trading. This is at a time where every single pound, every single euro, every single dollar really matters. And these illegal checkpoints reduce our ability to stretch scarce humanitarian resources.

It reduces our ability to move assistance efficiently. And when we're relying on cash as one of the modalities of support, it means that the availability of commercial goods is diminishing daily. Honestly speaking, today in Malakal, if a family is eating something other than tomatoes, okra, chilies and onions that are grown locally, anything else they are eating has been flown into Malakal, because it no longer arrives by road or by barge, because it's too expensive, because the transporters have to pay so many illegal taxes on the way.

They're just not taking the risk anymore. This is starting not just to raise costs, it's starting to be a cost in terms of people's lives. Even where humanitarian assistance does reach communities, the pressure that's facing those communities is mounting.

I went to Canal Pigi in Jonglei State, and I met families whose farmland, seven years after the original floods, is still submerged. Communities that could, in the old days, produce their own food, can no longer produce any food, and they can't rely on the small harvests in the land that is not submerged because of — rather contradictory — a drought which is growing in the area. So surrounded by floodwater, at the same time facing droughts in terms of a lack of rain.

Floodwater by the way, that after seven years of submerging is no longer clean, is no longer drinkable, is no longer safe. These extreme weather shocks and the impact of what is a super El Nino is having a greater impact in South Sudan, but also in neighbouring Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya. It's going to have a bigger effect on food security in the entire area.

The reduced funding now is exacerbating all these other risks, all these other challenges, leaving fewer families with food assistance, fewer children with access to nutrition support and fewer opportunities for communities to recover from repeated shocks. We are committed to keep doing all that we can, but we do need resources urgently to save lives. The World Food Programme and other partners, other UN organisations as well.

If you just look at WFP, we have an USD86 million gap right now, and a  USD 416 million gap over the next six months. Without that, we can't serve the refugees. We can't serve the displaced. We can't serve the vulnerable host communities during these six months. And we can't serve those people that are living in fear of famine in at least four locations of Jonglei State.

We do, however, also have a significant call to action for the Government of South Sudan. The burden cannot only sit with humanitarian and development workers. The Government of South Sudan has to start mobilizing their own funds to support their own people.

The humanitarian community cannot replace the obligations that the government has for their own citizens. They need to take action as well to put their own finances, their own resources — that may mean money, but it could mean food that is grown in other areas of the country that still has the ability. They also need to take action to make sure if those goods move commercially or as aid around the country, that they are not diminished in their impact because of the illegal taxation and daylight robbery, which is frankly growing and has grown so much over the last five years.

I'm happy to take more questions. I have to emphasize that while South Sudan is a country that has faced many challenges in its short life as an independent nation, we are seeing something different now. We are about to drop off the financial cliff at a time when the needs are at the greatest level that they've been at for the past 13 or 14 years.

Notes to editors:

Package of high-resolution photos is available here 

Broadcast quality footage is available here