Nearly 50,000 people face starvation in South Sudan: Oxfam

Africa Director for Oxfam International, Fati N’zi Hassane has warned of the humanitarian situation reaching catastrophic levels in South Sudan amid the recent huge influx of thousands of returnees and refugees from war-torn Sudan.

“Over half of the population, 7.8 million South Sudanese people are experiencing crisis level of hunger including nearly 50,000 people are already facing starvation, 1.4 million children are malnourished as we speak, 2 in 3 people are currently in need of humanitarian aid,” Hassane said during press conference on Thursday at Imperial Hotel in Juba.

Hassane said humanitarian agencies operating in the country need immediate funding to help scale the response to the people in emergency.

 She disclosed that Oxfam International needs about 13 million U.S dollars to ramp up humanitarian response.

 Hassane said conflict is the biggest driver of hunger in the region, adding that the fighting in the neighboring Sudan complicates the humanitarian response efforts.

“As thousands of returnees and refugees arrive daily, most of them have fled their homes with nothing, except the clothes on their back, local communities are hosting refugees and returnees as they struggle to meet their own needs,” she said.

The national ministry of humanitarian affairs and disaster management recently said that more than 70,000 people have entered into South Sudan after conflict broke out in Sudan on April 15.