LEKUANGOLE, South Sudan – After nearly a week of hiding from the conflict, Kallayn Keneng saw two of his young children die. “They cried and cried and said, ‘Mother, we need food,'” he said. But he had nothing to give. bodies with grass and left them in the woods.
Now the 40-year-old bad man is waiting for food aid, one of more than 30,000 people said to be probably hungry in Pibor County, South Sudan. The new finding of international food security experts means that this could be the first part of the world hungry since it was declared in 2017 in another part of the country, then in the midst of civil war.
South Sudan is one of four countries with areas that could starve, the United Nations has warned, along with Yemen, Burkina Faso and northeastern Nigeria.
Pibor County has seen deadly local violence and unprecedented flooding this year that has hampered relief efforts. On a visit to the city of Lekuangole this month, seven families told The Associated Press that 13 of their children starved to death between February and November.
Lekuangole head of government Peter Golu said he received unprecedented reports from community leaders who said 17 children starved to death there and in the surrounding villages between September and December.
The report of the Hunger Review Committee, published this month by the Integrated Classification of the Food Security Phase, stops declaring hunger due to insufficient data. But hunger is believed to occur, meaning that at least 20% of households face extreme food deficits and at least 30% of children have acute malnutrition.
But the South Sudanese government does not endorse the report’s findings. If there was a famine, it would look like a failure, he says.
“It simply came to our notice then. … We are here dealing with facts, they are not on the ground, “said John Pangech, chairman of South Sudan’s food security committee. The government says 11,000 people across the country are on the brink of starvation, very below the 105,000 estimated by the new report by food security experts.
The government also predicts that 60% of the country’s population, or about 7 million people, could suffer from extreme hunger next year, with the hardest hit areas in the northern states of Warrap, Jonglei and Bahr el Ghazal.
South Sudan has been struggling to recover from a five-year civil war. Food security experts say the magnitude of the hunger crisis has been created mostly by fighting. This includes this year’s violence crises between communities with alleged government and opposition support.
The government “not only denies the gravity of what is happening, but denies the basic fact that its own military policies and tactics are responsible,” said Alex de Waal, author of “Mass Hunger: The History and Future of the World.” fam “and executive director of the World Peace Foundation.
More than 2,000 people have been killed this year by localized violence that has been “armed” by people acting in their own interests, said the head of the UN mission in South Sudan, David Shearer. Violence has impeded the cultivation of people, blocked supply routes, burned markets and killed humanitarian workers.
Lekuangole families said the fighting destroyed their crops. They now subsist on leaves and fruits.
During the July violence, Kidrich Korok’s son Martin, 9, broke up with the family and spent more than a week in the woods. When he was found, very malnourished, it was too late.
“He always told me he would study hard and do something good for me when I grew up,” Korok said, crying. “Even as I was dying, I kept reassuring myself that I wouldn’t worry.”
Staff at Lekuangole Health Clinic registered 20 severely malnourished children in the first week and a half of December, more than five times the number of cases for the same period last year, said a nurse, Gabriel Gogol.
The floods have cut off most of the road access to the town of Pibor and its better medical care, forcing some seriously ill children to travel for three days along the river in sparse plastic ponds.
Pibor County officials say they do not understand why the South Sudanese government does not recognize the magnitude of the famine.
“If people tell (the capital) that there is no famine in Pibor, they are lying and they want people to die,” said David Langole Varo, who works for the government’s humanitarian arm in the Great Pibor Administrative Area.
In the town of Pibor, malnourished mothers and children wait hours outside health clinics in hopes of eating.
In a joint statement last week, three UN agencies called for immediate access to parts of Pibor County where people were facing catastrophic hunger levels.
The World Food Program has faced challenges in providing aid this year. Approximately 635 metric tons of food was stolen in Pibor County and Jonglei State, enough to feed 72,000 people, and a drop of food air in Lekuangole killed an elderly woman in October.
WFP said it needs more than $ 470 million over the next six months to deal with the hunger crisis.
Families are now worried about the resurgence of the struggle as the dry season approaches.
Sitting in a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in the town of Pibor, Elizabeth Girosdh watched her 8-month-old twins fight over their breast milk. The 45-year-old lost crops during the fighting in her village of Verteth in June. One of the twins has severe malnutrition.
“Sometimes I try to breastfeed, but I can’t and the kids cry and cry all night,” he said. “If there isn’t enough food, I’m worried I might lose them.”