A severe funding gap could leave more than 650,000 refugees and asylum seekers in South Sudan without food aid in the coming weeks, the UN said on Friday.
South Sudan was facing one of the world’s worst hunger crises, with more than 7.8 million people – more than half the population – suffering from acute food insecurity and 2.2 million children acutely malnourished, the World Food Program (WFP) and UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said.
South Sudan also receives some 3,000 refugees and returnees each week from neighboring Sudan, where a conflict that erupted in 2023 has created one of the world’s biggest displacement crises.
The UN agencies said the last food distributions for the most vulnerable 240,000 refugees in South Sudan are expected in September unless urgent funding is secured.
The 240,000 are the last refugees remaining on food aid, which has already been reduced to half rations as WFP reduced assistance due to funding constraints.
Read Also: BOTMA Registers 25,000 Tricycles to Improve Traffic Safety
This is not a future scenario “Unfortunately, that is a reality that will be in weeks,” WFP Deputy Country Director in South Sudan, Adham Effendi, told reporters in Juba.
UNHCR Deputy Representative Mesfin Degefu said that without funding, no refugees in South Sudan would get food assistance from October.
Families are already cutting meals, selling possessions, pulling children out of school and going into debt to survive, Degefu said. Women and children are also more prone to exploitation and abuse.
Some refugees have asked UNHCR to help them facilitate their return to Sudan, although the agency says the conditions there are not safe for return.
WFP requires $37 million to maintain refugee operations from October to December. Some 180,000 internally displaced people will lose food assistance from October, Effendi said, and some 600,000 people in famine-risk areas could lose life-saving support by November.
UNHCR said it had received only 28 per cent of the $286 million needed for its operations in South Sudan this year, threatening programs to help refugees become self-reliant thru farming, vocational training and other livelihood activities.
