Fri, March 11, 2022,
More than 70 percent of South Sudan's population will face extreme hunger this year as conflict and climate-related disasters deepen food scarcity, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) warned Friday.
Since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, the world's newest nation has been in the throes of economic and political crisis, and is struggling to recover from a five-year civil war that left nearly 400,000 people dead.
On Friday, the WFP warned of a fresh hunger crisis threatening millions of South Sudanese already battered by floods and a resurgence of conflict.
"While global attention remains fixated on Ukraine, a hidden hunger emergency is engulfing South Sudan with about 8.3 million people in South Sudan -– including refugees -– (facing) extreme hunger in the coming months," the WFP said in a statement.
As climate disasters and violence force tens of thousands of people to flee their homes and abandon their livelihoods, many South Sudanese have already been pushed to the brink and "could starve without food assistance", the agency said.
"The extent and depth of this crisis is unsettling. We’re seeing people across the country have exhausted all their available options to make ends meet and now they are left with nothing," said Adeyinka Badejo, the WFP's deputy country director in South Sudan.
The alarming news comes weeks after the United Nations warned that the country risks a return to war, with hundreds of civilians killed during outbreaks of interethnic violence.
Although a 2018 ceasefire and power-sharing deal between President Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar still largely holds, it is being sorely tested, with little progress made in fulfilling the terms of the lumbering peace process.
Four out of five of South Sudan's 11 million people live in "absolute poverty", according to the World Bank in 2018.
More than 60 percent of its population suffers from severe hunger from the combined effects of conflict, drought and floods.
750 killed in north Ethiopia
in second half 2021: rights body
At least 750 civilians were killed or executed in Ethiopia's Amhara and Afar regions in the second half of 2021, the country's rights body said in a report published Friday that catalogued widespread abuses, including torture and gang rape.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said at least 403 civilians died in air raids, drone strikes and heavy artillery fire since Tigrayan rebels fighting government forces launched an offensive into the neighbouring regions of northern Ethiopia in July last year.
At least 346 civilians lost their lives in extra-judicial killings carried out by the warning parties, mainly Tigrayan rebels but also goverment forces and their allies, the EHRC added.
It also accused Tigrayan rebels of widespread abuses such as gang rape, torture, looting and the destruction of public facilities such as hospitals and schools in the two regions that border Tigray.
"Tigray forces engaged in abductions and enforced disappearances in a manner that may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity," the report said.
The conflict in the north erupted in November 2020 when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent forces into Tigray to topple the ruling Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), a move he said came in response to the rebel group's attacks on army camps.
The war has spread to neighbouring regions, killed thousands of people and, according to the UN and the United States, driven hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation.
txw/ri
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