South Sudan on Monday declared famine in some parts of the country, with more than three years of war leaving nearly 5 million hungry in what aid groups called a “man-made” tragedy.

Isaiah Chol Aruai, chairman of South Sudan’s National Bureau of Statistics, said some parts of the northern Greater Unity region “are classified in famine, or … risk of famine”.

Aid agencies said 100,000 people were affected by the famine, which threaten to affect a further 1 million people in the coming months.

“A formal famine declaration means people have already started dying of hunger. The situation is the worst hunger catastrophe since fighting erupted more than three years ago,” said a statement by the World Food Programme (WFP),UNICEF and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, was engulfed by civil war in 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his rival and former deputy, Riek Machar, of plotting a coup against him.

An August 2015 peace deal was left in tatters when fighting broke out in Juba in July last year.

Violence — initially between ethnic Dinka supporters of Kiir and ethnic Nuer supporters of Machar — has since spread to other parts of the country, engulfing other ethnic groups and grievances.

The United Nations has warned of potential genocide and ethnic cleansing and there is no prospect of peace in sight.

Oil-rich Unity State, a traditional Nuer homeland and Machar’s birthplace, has been one of the flash-points in the conflict and has flipped several times between government and rebel forces.

“The convergence of evidence shows that the long-term effects of the conflict coupled with high food prices, economic crisis, low agricultural production and depleted livelihood options” have resulted in 4.9 million people going hungry, Aruai said.

That figure represents 42 percent of the country’s population.

The famine classification is made according to an internationally recognized sliding scale of hunger in which an extreme lack of food has led to starvation and death.

“The main tragedy of the report that has been launched today … is that the problem is man-made,” said Eugene Owusu, the United Nation’s humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan.

“The underlining drivers have been there for some time and we have all known that we have a major food crisis.”

He said conflict and insecurity for humanitarian workers, who had suffered attacks while carrying out their work, and the looting of “humanitarian assets” had exacerbated the crisis.

In September, several aid agencies had to pull out of the famine-hit area of Leer because of escalating fighting between the two forces.

“I would like to use this opportunity to call on the government, the warring parties and all actors to support humanitarians to provide the necessary access so we can continue to bring lifesaving services to those in need,” Owusu said.

According to aid groups, the number of people facing hunger is expected to rise to 5.5 million at the height of the lean season in July if nothing is done to curb the spread of the food crisis.

“Many families have exhausted every means they have to survive,” said the FAO’s representative in South Sudan, Serge Tissot.

“The people are predominantly farmers and war has disrupted agriculture. They’ve lost their livestock, even their farming tools. For months there has been a total reliance on whatever plants they can find and fish they can catch.”

The famine declaration comes as millions across the Horn of Africa are going hungry due to a devastating drought following two failed rainy seasons.

The U.N. said Monday it is “scaling up assistance and protection” in Somalia, as about 6.2 million Somalis, or half the country’s population, is in need of humanitarian assistance.

Nearly 1 million children will be acutely malnourished.

“The drought situation is deteriorating rapidly,” said Peter de Clercq, the humanitarian coordinator for Somalia. “Accelerated scale-up … assistance is required to avoid a dramatic rise in the number of malnourished children and a spike in mortality.”

Famine last hit the region six years ago, killing an estimated 260,000 people in Somalia.

The drought has also affected food security in South Sudan, however the biggest contributor to the famine is the inability of aid agencies to reach areas where the economy has collapsed due to the war.</s>The South Sudanese government and United Nations declared Monday a famine in parts of the country devastated by conflict. One hundred thousand people are “already starving” and nearly 5 million are in need of urgent help in war-torn South Sudan, according to U.N. humanitarian agencies.

“Our worst fears have been realized,” said Serge Tissot, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) spokesman in South Sudan. “Many families have exhausted every means they have to survive.” Nearly 275,000 children are at risk of starving to death unless the international community intervenes in a rapid and meaningful way, the U.N. warned.

The worst-hit region is Unity state in the north of the country. That’s also the scene of brutal fighting between government and rebel forces — and experts say that’s no coincidence.

“Conflicts are one of the key causes of food insecurity,” Lorenzo Bellu, a senior economist for the FAO, told Foreign Policy. Violent conflict disrupted agricultural production and led to surging food prices in the country. The region is also experiencing a prolonged drought that experts blame on climate change.

In other words, the crisis is largely man-made — and could have been averted. In December, the U.N. blocked an arms embargo on South Sudan that experts say would have mitigated the conflict fueling the food shortages. And humanitarian groups urged the international community for months to funnel aid and food to South Sudan to avert famine — to little avail.

The famine has arrived, but humanitarian workers still don’t have enough resources to cope. “We are quite concerned that we do not have the resources,” said George Fominyen, a U.N. spokesman in South Sudan’s capital, Juba. “We could run out of food by the end of June. The needs are so huge; every time you are entering a new front, a new battle.”

“In 2011 after the famine that hit Somalia, the world said never again,” said Emma Jane Drew, humanitarian program manager for Oxfam in South Sudan. “The declaration of famine in South Sudan reflects the collective failure to heed the countless warnings of an ever-worsening situation.”

It’s driven the most afflicted to desperation. “People have been pushed to the brink of surviving on what they can find to eat in swamps,” Drew said.

The U.N. has a technical definition for famine to distinguish it from other variants of food insecurity. At least 20 percent of households must face extreme food shortages, 30 percent or more of the population must face acute malnutrition, and the death rate must exceed 2 people per 10,000 per day for a country or international bodies to declare famine. The U.N. and its members aren’t bound to take any specific actions once a famine is declared. Rather, the declaration can highlight global attention to the problem.

Humanitarian aid in the region is already thinly-stretched, but it could get even worse. Somalia, Nigeria, and Yemen also face “unprecedented” need for emergency food assistance to prevent famine, according to the U.S. government-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

But South Sudan’s three-year old civil war makes the situation especially dire there, making aid deliveries even trickier. “I wasn’t prepared for the shocking devastation I witnessed,” said Andrew Gilmour, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for human rights, last week after he traveled to areas of South Sudan ravaged by fighting between the government and rebel forces.

Civilians are caught in the middle of that fighting, with brutal results. Government soldiers and militias operate with ruthless impunity in the region, carry out war crimes including murders, torture, forced cannibalism, and mass rape.

“It is utterly abhorrent that women in this area have to choose between getting raped or getting a livelihood,” Gilmour said. “But this seems the brutal reality of what South Sudan has become.”</s>A famine has been declared in parts of South Sudan, the first to be announced in any part of the world in six years.

The government and the United Nations report that some 100,000 people are facing starvation, with a million more on the brink of famine.

A combination of civil war and an economic collapse have been blamed.

There have been warnings of famine in Yemen, Somalia and north-eastern Nigeria, but South Sudan is the first to declare one.

The famine is currently affecting parts of to Unity state in South Sudan, but humanitarian groups have warned that the crisis could spread if urgent help is not received.

Aid agencies, including the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the children’s fund Unicef, said that 4.9 million people – more than 40% of South Sudan’s population – are in urgent need of food.

Food shortages can lead to large numbers of people lacking nutrition, but only rarely do they amount to famine, according to UN humanitarian criteria.

Long periods of drought and other problems reducing the supply of food do not necessarily result in a famine.

A famine is declared only when certain measures of mortality, malnutrition and hunger are met. They are:
• at least 20% of households in an area face extreme food shortages with a limited ability to cope
• the death rate exceeds two persons per day per 10,000 persons

The declaration of a famine carries no binding obligations on the UN or member states, but serves to focus global attention on the problem.

The report on Monday said that an increase in humanitarian assistance was needed in order to prevent the famine from spreading to other vulnerable areas.

“If sustained and adequate assistance is delivered urgently, the hunger situation can be improved in the coming months and further suffering mitigated,” the report said.

Head of the WFP in South Sudan, Joyce Luma, said that the famine was “man-made” after three years of conflict across the country stifled crop production and hit farmers and rural livelihoods.

The impact of the conflict, combined with high food prices, economic disruption and low agricultural production has resulted in the area becoming “food insecure”, the report added.

It is not the first time South Sudan has experienced such a crisis. During the war for independence from Sudan, the territory suffered from a famine in 1998.

Last week, the WFP warned that more than 20 million people may face starvation in a series of famines over the next six months.

The WFP’s chief economist, Arif Husain, said a combination of wars and drought meant that for the first time in recent years, aid workers were now talking about four simultaneous famines in separate parts of the world.

He added that despite record levels of international humanitarian aid distribution, there was not enough to look after all the people in need.</s>People are already dying of hunger, and another 1 million people are on the brink of famine, UN agencies said.

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."

Famine has gripped parts of #SouthSudan. Nearly 5M men, women and kids need food, agriculture & nutrition assistance https://t.co/KqFxZnqLtg pic.twitter.com/gOZeYXKZiB — World Food Programme (@WFP) February 20, 2017 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. "Vulnerable people, out of reach of life-saving assistance due to the conflict, are paying the ultimate price," she added in a statement. Drew said the famine was "a man-made tragedy" and called for an end to the fighting so aid could get through to those most in need. #SouthSudan: People pushed to the brink of survival as #famine hits, women & children worst affected: https://t.co/NHHQ3CVunq pic.twitter.com/E3W3IavlSA — Oxfam International (@Oxfam) February 20, 2017 George Fominyen, the UN food program spokesman in South Sudan's capital, Juba, said the problem had been building for years. "It has not been sudden," he said. "Food insecurity, hunger, malnutrition has been getting steadily worse since the conflict started three years ago." Fomiyen said humanitarian groups had found it extremely difficult to reach the hardest-hit areas. "We have to talk to 10 to 15 people and ask if it's possible to send a team there," he said. "You cannot just access these places without prior agreement." Fomiyen said the program's food supplies will run out unless it can secure "a substantial injection of funds" -- $205 million -- within the next six months. "We are quite concerned that we do not have the resources," he said. "We could run out of food by the end of June. The needs are so huge; every time you are entering a new front, a new battle." Last week the United Nations warned that 1.5 million people had fled South Sudan , crossing the border into Uganda to escape the fighting in their homeland, and creating Africa's biggest refugee crisis. Soldiers killed dad in front of his daughter Soldiers killed dad in front of his daughter Nasir Abel Fernandes, senior emergency coordinator for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said Ugandan refugee camps are filling up with desperate South Sudanese citizens "More attention needs to be paid to South Sudan," Fernandes said. "The leaders really should be asked to take responsibility and stop this killing of civilians." South Sudan is the world's newest country. It gained its independence from Sudan in 2011, after years of civil war. But after two years of relative peace, trouble broke out between President Salva Kiir's mainly Dinka army and the Nuer people of his former deputy Riek Machar. Since July 2016 that fighting has intensified to draw in other ethnic groups and render the countryside, including the formerly agriculturally rich Equatoria region, a permanent war zone that has been producing refugees instead of food.</s>Women carry sacks of food in Nimini village, Unity State, northern South Sudan, February 8, 2017. Picture taken on February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

JUBA (Reuters) - Parts of war-ravaged South Sudan have been hit by famine, a government official said on Monday, saying nearly half the country's population would lack reliable access to affordable food by July.

Oil-rich South Sudan has been mired in civil war since 2013, when President Salva Kii fired his deputy. Since then the fighting has increasingly split the country along ethnic lines, leading the United Nations to warn of a potential genocide.

The fighting has prevented many farmers from harvesting their crops while hyper inflation which reached more than 800 percent last year has put the price of imported food beyond the reach of many.

Parts of the country have also been hit by drought.

“In greater Unity (state), some counties are classified in famine or ... risk of famine,” Isaiah Chol Aruai, chairman of South Sudan’s National Bureau of Statistic, told a news conference in Juba.

Aruai said the impact of the war, combined with high food prices, economic disruption and low agricultural production was expected to make 4.9 million people what is termed "food insecure" between February and April, with that number rising to 5.5 million by July.

"Famine has become a tragic reality in parts of South Sudan and our worst fears have been realised," Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) South Sudan representative, Serge Tissot, said at the same news conference.

According to the United Nations, famine is declared when at least 20 percent of households in an area face extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 percent, and two or more people per 10,000 are dying per day.

The fighting has uprooted more than 3 million people and a U.N. report released on Monday said continuing displacement presented "heightened risks of prolonged (food) underproduction into 2018".

Many parts of the country are very hard to reach. Six years after independence from neighbouring Sudan, South Sudan only has only 200 km (120 miles) of paved roads in a nation the size of Texas. Fighting also impedes aid delivery; warehouses have been looted and aid workers have been killed.

This month, in a sign the war was taking a turn for the worse, Kiir's government has been hit by high-profile defections.

Two top military officials resigned their positions, citing ethnic favouritism, human rights abuses and others charges.

Punishments handed out to some soldiers from the Dinka, Kiir's tribe, for crimes including rape and murder were being set aside, Colonel Khalid Ono Loki, one of officials who resigned said. The minister of labour has also defected to the rebels.</s>War-torn South Sudan needs $205m ( £164m) to cope until July with a man-made famine, the World Food Programme (WFP) has told IBTimes UK. More than one million people are facing famine in Unity State, the South Sudanese government and the United Nations warned on 20 January, with another 100,000 people facing starvation.

This is the first time that a famine has been declared in any part of the world in six years.

"With many other areas of the country on the brink of a hunger catastrophe, we need to scale up support to families and maintain regular and consistent assistance for them," Challiss McDonough, senior regional spokesperson for WFP in Kenya said.

"But WFP is extremely concerned that we do not have enough resources to continue this response for the whole year. Without a substantial injection of funds, we could run out of food by end of June."

Fears that lack of funds might hinder an appropriate response resonates with other humanitarian organisations on the ground.

"The situation facing children who were already hungry and going without meals is now rapidly unravelling. If aid funding and deliveries are not immediately scaled up we should expect to see children facing a catastrophe and starvation and migration to find food on a massive scale". Perry Mansfield, National Director for World Vision in South Sudan, told IBTimes UK.

"The rainy season is only weeks away and once that arrives the roads become impassable meaning that millions of people will be cut off from aid. We have a small and rapidly closing window of opportunity to get food into these remote areas, to preposition it, before it is too late," he continued.

The South Sudan conflict erupted in 2013 when President Salva Kiir, of the Dinka ethnic group, fired his deputy Riek Machar, who then became a rebel leader, from the Nuer group.

Ethnic-related violence targeting Dinka and Nuer has killed an estimated 50,000 people, amid allegations of crimes against humanity committed by both sides, including rape, torture and the use of child soldiers.

At least 1.5m people have fled to other countries. The exodus has been deemed "Africa's worst refugee crisis".

More than 2m are internally displaced as the country is on the verge of a Rwanda-style genocide.

People are fleeing violence leaving their crops to rot in the fields. In addition, the heavy rainy season has made some roads inaccessible hindering food deliverance.

Many fear hunger will deepen as the conflict has spilled into the Equatoria region, considered one of South Sudan's breadbaskets.

The UN has now appealed for $1.6 bn (£1.2bn) to provide life-saving assistance and protection to 5.8 million people across the country.

"WFP's severe resourcing shortfalls extend to neighbouring countries where South Sudanese refugees have sought shelter in the last three years," McDonough said. She added that the $205m will cover just the humanitarian response in South Sudan, while more funds are needed to help refugees.

Kiir and Machar have agreed on several peace deals – the last of which was signed in August 2015 – but have failed to control their troops, who have broken every ceasefire since 2014.

Machar fled South Sudan following deadly fighting in the capital Juba in July 2016.

He is currently in South Africa seeking medical treatment, but in an exclusive talk with IBTimes UK said he was ready "to go home".

His wife, Angelina Teny, also a member of SPLM-IO, told IBTimes UK she believes her husband can contribute to achieving peace in the war-torn nation which is on the verge of a Rwanda-style genocide.</s>In this photo taken Oct. 19, 2016 and released by UNICEF, a young girl who fled fighting in nearby Leer in recent months, queues for food aid at a food distribution made by the World Food Programme in Bentiu, South Sudan. Famine has been declared Monday in two counties of South Sudan, according to an announcement by the South Sudan government and three U.N. agencies, which says the calamity is the result of prolonged civil war and an entrenched economic crisis that has devastated the war-torn East African nation. (Kate Holt/UNICEF via AP)</s>Story highlights UN declares famine in South Sudan's Unity state

More than 1 million children across the country are suffering from acute malnutrition, UNICEF warns

(CNN) 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, aid agencies say.

People are already dying of hunger, and another 1 million people are on the brink of famine, UN agencies said.

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."

Read More</s>The South Sudanese government and United Nations declared Monday a famine in parts of the country devastated by conflict. One hundred thousand people are “already starving” and nearly 5 million are in need of urgent help in war-torn South Sudan, according to U.N. humanitarian agencies.

“Our worst fears have been realized,” said Serge Tissot, U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) spokesman in South Sudan. “Many families have exhausted every means they have to survive.” Nearly 275,000 children are at risk of starving to death unless the international community intervenes in a rapid and meaningful way, the U.N. warned.

The worst-hit region is Unity state in the north of the country. That’s also the scene of brutal fighting between government and rebel forces — and experts say that’s no coincidence.

“Conflicts are one of the key causes of food insecurity,” Lorenzo Bellu, a senior economist for the FAO, told Foreign Policy. Violent conflict disrupted agricultural production and led to surging food prices in the country. The region is also experiencing a prolonged drought that experts blame on climate change.

In other words, the crisis is largely man-made — and could have been averted. In December, the U.N. blocked an arms embargo on South Sudan that experts say would have mitigated the conflict fueling the food shortages. And humanitarian groups urged the international community for months to funnel aid and food to South Sudan to avert famine — to little avail.

The famine has arrived, but humanitarian workers still don’t have enough resources to cope. “We are quite concerned that we do not have the resources,” said George Fominyen, a U.N. spokesman in South Sudan’s capital, Juba. “We could run out of food by the end of June. The needs are so huge; every time you are entering a new front, a new battle.”

“In 2011 after the famine that hit Somalia, the world said never again,” said Emma Jane Drew, humanitarian program manager for Oxfam in South Sudan. “The declaration of famine in South Sudan reflects the collective failure to heed the countless warnings of an ever-worsening situation.”

It’s driven the most afflicted to desperation. “People have been pushed to the brink of surviving on what they can find to eat in swamps,” Drew said.

The U.N. has a technical definition for famine to distinguish it from other variants of food insecurity. At least 20 percent of households must face extreme food shortages, 30 percent or more of the population must face acute malnutrition, and the death rate must exceed 2 people per 10,000 per day for a country or international bodies to declare famine. The U.N. and its members aren’t bound to take any specific actions once a famine is declared. Rather, the declaration can highlight global attention to the problem.

Humanitarian aid in the region is already thinly-stretched, but it could get even worse. Somalia, Nigeria, and Yemen also face “unprecedented” need for emergency food assistance to prevent famine, according to the U.S. government-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

But South Sudan’s three-year old civil war makes the situation especially dire there, making aid deliveries even trickier. “I wasn’t prepared for the shocking devastation I witnessed,” said Andrew Gilmour, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for human rights, last week after he traveled to areas of South Sudan ravaged by fighting between the government and rebel forces.

Civilians are caught in the middle of that fighting, with brutal results. Government soldiers and militias operate with ruthless impunity in the region, carry out war crimes including murders, torture, forced cannibalism, and mass rape.

“It is utterly abhorrent that women in this area have to choose between getting raped or getting a livelihood,” Gilmour said. “But this seems the brutal reality of what South Sudan has become.”</s>File photo taken on October 11, 2016 shows a mother breastfeeding her child suffering from acute malnutrition at the clinic run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Aweil, northern Bahr al-Ghazal, South Sudan. The government declared famine on February 20, 2017 in parts of the country following more than three years of war. AFP PHOTO

South Sudan's government said Monday that more than three years of war have led to famine in parts of the nation, a tragedy aid agencies criticised as "man-made".

Isaiah Chol Aruai, the chairman of South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics, said some parts of the northern Greater Unity region "are classified in famine, or... risk of famine".

A joint press statement from aid agencies said 100,000 people were affected by the famine, which threatened another one million people in the coming months.

"A formal famine declaration means people have already started dying of hunger. The situation is the worst hunger catastrophe since fighting erupted more than three years ago," said the statement signed by the World Food Programme (WFP), UN children's agency UNICEF and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, was engulfed by civil war in 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his rival and former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup against him.

An August 2015 peace deal was left in tatters when fighting broke out in Juba in July last year.

Violence — initially between ethnic Dinka supporters of Kiir and ethnic Nuer supporters of Machar — has since spread to other parts of the country, engulfing other ethnic groups and grievances.

The United Nations has warned of potential genocide and ethnic cleansing, and there is no prospect of peace in sight.

Unity State, a traditional Nuer homeland and birthplace of Machar, has been one of the flashpoints in the conflict.

"The convergence of evidence shows that the long term effects of the conflict coupled with high food prices, economic crisis, low agricultural production and depleted livelihood options" have resulted in 4.9 million people going hungry, Aruai said.

The famine classification is according to an internationally recognised sliding scale of hunger in which an extreme lack of food has lead to starvation and death.

"The main tragedy of the report that has been launched today... is that the problem is man-made," said Eugene Owusu, the United Nation's Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan.

"The underlining drivers have been there for some time and we have all known that we have a major food crisis."
More than 4.9 million people in South Sudan are in need of aid due to a famine.