UN aid agencies confirm that famine in South Sudan has left 100,000
people on the verge of starvation and almost 5 million people, more than 40% of
the country's population, in need of urgent help.
People are already dying of hunger, and another 1 million people are on
the brink of famine. Years of civil war, a refugee crisis and a collapsing
economy have taken their toll on South Sudan since it gained its independence
in 2011. Now the UN World Food Programme and nongovernmental organizations are
sounding the alarm, warning that more than a million children are suffering
from acute malnutrition.
"Our worst fears have been realized," said Serge Tissot, of
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. "Many
families have exhausted every means they have to survive."
The war has disrupted farming and
left people with little choice but to scavenge for food to survive.
"People have been pushed to the brink, they are surviving on what they can
find to eat in swamps," said Emma Jane Drew, Oxfam's humanitarian program
manager in South Sudan.
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