According to the British organization Save the Children, South Sudan is home to some 1.4 million under-fives who are malnourished due to widespread flooding and intercommunal strife.
Since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, the world’s youngest nation, which has a sizable rural population, has been experiencing “its worst food crisis,” according to the report.
“The situation has deteriorated in recent months with more than 615,000 people impacted by an unprecedented fourth consecutive year of large-scale flooding, destroying homes, crops,” Save the Children said in a statement.
According to the report, cases of malaria and snakebites are also on the rise, notably harming children and women.
According to the organization, thousands of people have been driven from their homes as a result of flooding and a vicious cycle of frequently deadly interethnic warfare. The charity pleaded with the international community not to “overlook South Sudan or to redirect funds to other emergencies.”
According to Tuesday’s report from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), flooding has affected about 909,000 people in nine out of ten states.
South Sudan, like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, has suffered from the fallout of the war in Ukraine which has sent global prices of food and fuel soaring.
The value of the local currency has also slumped by nearly 40 percent this year, Save the Children said.
More than 70% of South Sudan’s 11 million residents would experience extreme hunger this year as a result of natural disasters and armed conflict, the UN’s World Food Programme predicted in March.
In order to help disadvantaged communities and children build resilience against climate disasters and shocks, Save the Children urged leaders who planned to attend the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November to raise funds for this cause.
“The first generation of South Sudan children are growing up now and we must not fail them by allowing South Sudan to become a forgotten crisis,” said country director Jib Rabiltossaporn.
One of the poorest nations on the planet despite large oil reserves, South Sudan has lurched from crisis to crisis since independence, spending almost half of its life as a nation at war.
