JUBA, July 10 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan is on the brink of famine as it braces for its worst floods in 60 years, which will drive parts of the country to the edge of starvation, a global charity, Save the Children, warned on Wednesday.
The child rights agency also warned of a devastating large-scale hunger crisis among children in South Sudan, which is on alert for a looming human and climate disaster in the coming months.
Pornpun Jib Rabiltossaporn, Save the Children South Sudan country director, said a horror scenario is unfolding in the country. "While floods are part of life for families in much of the country, we are seeing a situation where the floods will be so extreme, over such vast patches of land, that entire communities will be marooned from assistance," Rabiltossaporn said in a statement issued in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
Rabiltossaporn said children will start to die from hunger-related illnesses as the flooding takes hold amid extreme levels of hunger and malnutrition in children across the country.
The statement was in response to new data released on Monday by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-NET), an analysis agency that monitors food security worldwide, which shows massive floods will contribute to a risk of famine in South Sudan from June 2024 until January 2025.
According to the report, families in the areas expected to be worst impacted have already been battling years of conflict, hunger, rising food prices, previous floods, and more recently, an influx of refugees and returnees from the 15-month conflict raging in Sudan.
Despite a peace deal in South Sudan in 2018, the country is still facing one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises, with about nine million people, about 75 percent of the population, including nearly five million children, in need of humanitarian assistance.
According to Save the Children, Unity State, a low-lying and flood-prone region in the central southern part of South Sudan, has been listed as particularly vulnerable to famine.
The last formal declaration of famine anywhere in the world was in parts of Unity State in February 2017, where nearly 80,000 people faced famine conditions and mass deaths were only averted by an effective and rapid aid response.
"The predicted famine is being driven in part by a major flooding event, which is expected to exceed the floods of 2020 and 2022," the charity said.
It noted that current water levels in Lake Victoria, a source of the Nile, have reached a 128-year high, with the government of South Sudan issuing a warning that water released from the lake will flood vast parts of the country in the latter part of 2024.
FEWS-NET estimates that the area impacted by flooding could exceed 65,000 square kilometers, or the equivalent of the entire land area of Sri Lanka.
"There is an imminent disaster threatening communities in South Sudan. Unless there is an urgent scaling up of funding for preparation work, the upcoming floods are guaranteed to wreak havoc," Rabiltossaporn said.
Besides Unity State, the flooding is projected to affect areas where many people are already vulnerable, including Jonglei, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile and Warrap states. ■
