‘Children are bound to die’

JUBA (AP):

At 14 months, Adut Duor should be walking. Instead, his spine juts through his skin and his legs dangle like sticks from his mother’s lap in a South Sudan hospital. At half the size of a healthy baby his age, he is unable to walk.

Adut’s mother, Ayan, couldn’t breastfeed her fifth child, a struggle shared by the 1.1 million pregnant and lactating women who are malnourished in the east African country.

“If I had a blessed life and money to feed him, he would get better,” Ayan said at a state hospital in Bor, 200 kilometres (124 miles) from the capital, Juba.

A recent UN-backed report projects that about 2.3 million children under five in South Sudan now require treatment for acute malnutrition, with over 700,000 of those in severe condition. The report attributes the rising numbers to renewed conflict in the northern counties and reduced humanitarian assistance.

Independent since 2011, South Sudan has been crippled by violence and poor governance. United Nations investigators recently accused authorities of looting billions of dollars in public funds, as nine million of South Sudan’s almost 12 million people rely on humanitarian assistance. Now, funding cuts, renewed violence, climate change and entrenched corruption are converging to deepen the unfolding hunger crisis.

FUNDING CUTS

In the basic ward at the hospital in Bor, dozens of mothers cradle frail children. Malnutrition cases have more than doubled this year, a crisis worsened by recent staff cuts. Funding cuts this spring forced Save the Children to lay off 180 aid staff, including 15 nutrition workers who were withdrawn from Bor in May.

Funding cuts have also hit supplies of ready-to-use therapeutic food, RUTF, the peanut paste that has been a lifeline for millions of children around the world. USAID once covered half global production, but Action Against Hunger’s Country Director Clement Papy Nkubizi warns stocks are now running dangerously low.

“Twenty-two per cent of children admitted for malnutrition at Juba’s largest children’s hospital have died of hunger,” Nkubizi said. “Triangulating this to the field – there are many children who are bound to die.”

He explained that families now walk for hours to reach support after the organisation closed 28 malnutrition centres. UNICEF said more than 800 (66 per cent) of malnutrition sites nationwide report reduced staffing.

VIOLENCE HAMPERING AID DELIVERY

Violence in South Sudan’s northern states has compounded the crisis, blocking humanitarian access and driving hundreds of thousands from their farmland.

Although a 2018 peace deal ended the country’s five-year civil war, renewed clashes between the national army and militia groups raise fears of a return to large-scale conflict. In Upper Nile State, where the violence has resurged, malnutrition levels are the highest.

The UN said intensified fighting along the white Nile River meant no supplies reached the area for over a month in May, plunging more than 60,000 already malnourished children into deeper hunger.

In June, the South Sudanese government told The Associated Press it turned to US company Fogbow for airdrops to respond to needs in areas hit by violence. Although the company claims to be a humanitarian force, UN workers question the departure from the established system.

Global humanitarian group Action Against Hunger had to abandon warehouses and operations in Fangak, Jonglei State, after an aerial bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital left seven dead in May.

“Our sites in these locations are now also flooded, submerged as we speak,” said Nkubizi.

Around 1.6 million people are at risk of displacement from flooding, as submerged farmland and failed harvests compound hunger in the climate-vulnerable country.

“Malnutrition is not just about food insecurity — cholera outbreaks, malaria and poor sanitation compound the problem,” said Shaun Hughes, the World Food Program’s regional emergency coordinator.