The United Nations and United States yesterday warned that food insecurity in South Sudan is the ‘worst in the world’ and the situation may soon cross the technical threshold for being declared a famine.

Eugène-Richard Gasana, the Rwandan diplomat currently serving as president of the UN Security Council, expressed deep concern at the ‘catastrophic’ food insecurity in South Sudan after seven months of fighting in the country.

He said UN Security Council members “expressed deep alarm that the crisis in South Sudan may soon reach the threshold of famine as a result of continued conflict, civilian targeting and displacement.”

On the same day, US Secretary of State John Kerry stated the country is “at the brink of famine,” laying the responsibility with South Sudan’s leaders to “pull their country back from the brink.”

“South Sudan now faces the worst food security crisis in the world. Violence has forced over 1.5 million people from their homes since mid-December, while more than 50,000 children under the age of five are at risk of dying from malnutrition this year,” he remarked.

“Unless the fighting ends and a peace agreement is concluded, the number of those at risk of starvation… will reach even more catastrophic levels,” Kerry added.

The UN Security Council meanwhile urged donor nations to fulfill pledges made at the Oslo Humanitarian Pledging Conference in May 2014, so that aid agencies will have more funds to respond to the ongoing crisis.

Council members also called for the warring parties in the country “to expedite safe and unhindered humanitarian access” for the delivery of emergency aid.

Kerry blamed the leaders of the two warring factions, SPLA-Juba and SPLA-IO for the situation, saying, “President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar share responsibility for triggering this man-made crisis and they share responsibility for ending it.”

“I call on them to end the fighting immediately and negotiate in good faith,” he said.

He added that the warring parties should dismantle “unofficial checkpoints that impede the delivery of aid” and ensure the security of aid workers and supplies.

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South Sudan army attacks food distribution (16 July)

File photo: A medical staff attends to a severely malnourished child at the Doctors Without Borders feeding centre in Leer, Unity State, 16 July 2014 (Reuters/Andreea Campeanu)