{"id":112522,"date":"2018-06-11T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=112522"},"modified":"2018-06-06T16:37:44","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T15:37:44","slug":"south-sudan-suffering-on-almost-unimaginable-scale-warns-un-relief-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/06\/south-sudan-suffering-on-almost-unimaginable-scale-warns-un-relief-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"South Sudan Suffering on \u2018Almost Unimaginable Scale\u2019, Warns UN Relief Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 <\/p>\n

People are suffering \u201con an almost unimaginable scale\u201d in South Sudan, the United Nations emergency relief chief said on Monday [4 Jun], adding that he welcomed the announcement by the United States that it is to review the amount of assistance it provides to the war-torn country.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4 Jun 2018 – <\/em>Speaking in Geneva, Mark Lowcock, who is also UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA<\/a>), said that five years of civil war had left 7.1 million people, or more than half the country\u2019s population, in need of humanitarian aid.<\/p>\n

Repeated negotiations have broken down to resolve fighting between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar, including recent peace talks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, held under the auspices of the African regional forum, IGAD<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings are still getting worse\u201d, Mr. Lowcock told reporters in Geneva, highlighting \u201cscorched earth tactics\u201d by belligerents.<\/p>\n

This had rendered formerly fertile areas of the country barren, amid murder, rape and other grave human rights violations, the UN official said.<\/p>\n

He noted \u201canother round of failed talks\u201d in Ethiopia and declarations of ceasefires which were \u201ca fiction because the fighting continues\u201d.<\/p>\n

On the issue of international funding, Mr. Lowcock said that he believed that there was no question of cutting aid, although donors wanted to be sure that the funds were not \u201cinstrumentalized\u201d as he put it, by the warring parties.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really welcome the announcement made by the White House a couple of weeks ago that the US is going to conduct a review of its assistance to South Sudan\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>
\n\u2014 Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Mark Lowcock, USG for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, discusses the health and nutrition situation among people displaced by conflict in South Sudan, with Dr. Joice Dominic in Gezira, near Yei Town. UNMISS\/Eric Kanalstein<\/p><\/div>\n

Foreign Governments, including the combined countries of the European Union, are also seeking to improve safety for humanitarian workers and get the \u201cmen with guns to behave differently\u201d, the UN official said, adding that despite the insecurity, aid workers still managed to reach \u201cabout 2 million people\u201d in the last month.<\/p>\n

Without this assistance, the situation \u201cwould be much worse\u201d, Mr. Lowcock said, adding that South Sudan remains \u201cthe most dangerous place to be an aid worker\u201d, having claimed the lives of 100 humanitarians since fighting began in 2013.<\/p>\n

While visiting South Sudan in recent weeks, the Emergency Relief Coordinator said that many high-level country representatives had told him that \u201cthings can\u2019t go on like this\u201d.<\/p>\n

Above all, Mr. Lowcock noted, there needed to be a change \u201cin the way that belligerents are behaving\u201d, before adding \u201cI really welcome the announcement made by the White House a couple of weeks ago that the US is going to conduct a review of its assistance to South Sudan\u201d.<\/p>\n

Asked which measures might encourage the warring parties to negotiate or at least curtail the destructive activities of armed groups, Mr. Lowcock noted that an arms embargo would be a matter for the UN Security Council, where he had been told \u201cinformally\u201d that some members were considering it.<\/p>\n

Some Governments also had mechanisms to investigate the private wealth of political appointees, the UN official continued, adding that visa bans and financial sanctions have been used to apply pressure on those suspected of using natural resources for personal gain.<\/p>\n

Famine was declared briefly last year in Unity State where tens of thousands of civilians were under siege, Mr. Lowcock said, adding that humanitarians had managed to get aid to those who needed it.<\/p>\n

The situation isn\u2019t as dire as that yet, he added, but a lot of places are \u201con the cusp\u201d of passing into severe vulnerability.<\/p>\n

Outside South Sudan, refugees have fled settled in South Kordofan in neighbouring Sudan and to Kukuma camp in north-west Kenya, and Mr. Lowcock appealed to the international community to help support these host countries \u201cas they have their own problems to deal with\u201d.<\/p>\n

To date, the UN\u2019s $1.7 billion humanitarian response plan for South Sudan is less than a quarter funded.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 news.un.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People are suffering \u201con an almost unimaginable scale\u201d in South Sudan, the United Nations emergency relief chief said on Monday [4 Jun], adding that he welcomed the announcement by the United States that it is to review the amount of assistance it provides to the war-torn country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":109474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}