{"id":87345,"date":"2017-02-27T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-02-27T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=87345"},"modified":"2017-02-22T14:34:20","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T14:34:20","slug":"south-sudan-declares-famine-other-countries-may-follow-warns-unicef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/02\/south-sudan-declares-famine-other-countries-may-follow-warns-unicef\/","title":{"rendered":"South Sudan Declares Famine, Other Countries May Follow Warns UNICEF"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Refugees dig for water in a dried up watering hole in Jamam camp, in South Sudan’s Upper Nile state.
Credit: Jared Ferrie\/IPS<\/p><\/div>\n

21 Feb 2017<\/em> – South Sudan Monday [20 Feb] became the first country to declare famine since 2012, as UNICEF warned that 1.4 million children are at risk of dying from starvation with famine also imminent in Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen.<\/p>\n

Protracted conflict is the root cause of the food crises in all four countries, reflecting the reality that famine is more often than not man-made.<\/p>\n

The South Sudanese government declared famine on Monday after its monitoring system found that some 100,000 people may die from starvation, while a further one million are on the brink of famine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can still save many lives. The severe malnutrition and looming\u00a0famine\u00a0are largely man-made,\u201d said\u00a0UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur common humanity demands faster action. We must not repeat the tragedy of the 2011\u00a0famine\u00a0in the Horn of Africa,\u201d said Lake.<\/p>\n

Others also described the disaster as man-made calling for an end to ongoing fighting to allow for food to be distributed.<\/p>\n

“They\u2019ve 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,” — FAO Representative in South Sudan Serge Tissot.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWFP and the entire humanitarian community have been trying with all our might to avoid this catastrophe,\u201d said World Food Program (WFP) Country Director Joyce Luma. \u201cBut we have also warned that there is only so much that humanitarian assistance can achieve in the absence of meaningful peace and security.\u201d<\/p>\n

FAO Representative in South Sudan Serge Tissot described how South Sudan\u2019s people who are predominantly farmers \u201chave exhausted every means they have to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve 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,\u201d said Tissot.<\/p>\n

Emma Jane Drew, Oxfam\u2019s Humanitarian Programme Manager in South Sudan also described the famine as \u201ca man-made tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have been pushed to the brink of surviving on what they can find to eat in swamps,\u201d said Drew. \u201cWe need an end to the fighting so that we can get food to those that urgently need it and provide them with support to rebuild their shattered lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a joint statement from The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children\u2019s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP): \u201cA formal famine declaration means people have already started dying of hunger.\u201d<\/p>\n

The worst affected area is Unity State is in the northern-central part of the South Sudan, which was formed when it gained independence from Sudan in 2011.<\/p>\n

Doctors Without Borders\/M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF) said that fighting in the area has made it impossible for them to open a hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe extreme level of violence has had a severe impact on people\u2019s ability to meet basic needs such as safe drinking water, food supplies, shelter and health care,\u201d said Nicolas Peissel, MSF project coordinator. \u201cPeople have lost everything and struggle every day to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

Lyndal Rowlands is the United Nations Bureau Chief at <\/em>IPS-Inter Press Service. Before becoming a UN correspondent in 2014 she worked as a researcher, writer and evaluator in the international development sector. She lives in East Harlem via Dili, Timor-Leste and Melbourne, Australia<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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

South Sudan Monday [20 Feb] became the first country to declare famine since 2012, as UNICEF warned that 1.4 million children are at risk of dying from starvation with famine also imminent in Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen. Protracted conflict is the root cause of the food crises in all four countries, reflecting the reality that famine is more often than not man-made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87345","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=87345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}