“Children are required to die”: corruption, aid cuts and violence fuel a hunger crisis in South South
Juba, South Sudan – At 14 months, Adut Duor should walk. Instead, his backbone vanishes through his skin and legs hang like sticks in her mother’s knees in a southern Sudan hospital. Half away from the size of a healthy baby in good age, he is unable to walk.
Adud’s mother, Ayan, could not breastfeed her fifth child, a struggle shared by the 1.1 million pregnant and breastfeeding women who are malnourished in the country of East Africa.
“If I had a blessed life and money to feed it, it would be better,” said Ayan in a Bor state hospital, 200 kilometers (124 miles) in the capital, Juba.
A recent report supported by the UN is projects that around 2.3 million children under the age of 5 in South Sudan now require treatment for acute malnutrition, with more than 700,000 people in a severe state. The report attributes the increase in figures to a renewed conflict in the counties of the North and reduced humanitarian assistance.
Independent since 2011, South Sudan is paralyzed by violence and bad governance. United Nations investigators recently accused authorities of plundering billions of dollars in public funds because 9 million people in South Sudan are counting on humanitarian aid. Now, financing cuts, renewed violence, climate change and rooted corruption converge to deepen the hunger crisis.
In the basic service of Bor hospital, dozens of mothers rock fragile children. Malnutrition cases have more than doubled this year, a crisis has worsened by recent staff. This spring financing discounts have forced children to dismiss 180 assistance employees, including 15 nutrition workers who were withdrawn from Bor in May.
The financing cuts have also struck supplies of ready -to -use therapeutic food, Rutf, peanut paste which was a lifeline for millions of children around the world. USAID has covered half of the world’s production, but the action against the director of the country of Hunger, Clement Papy Nkubizi, warns the actions are now dangerously low.
“Twenty-two percent of children admitted for malnutrition in the largest children’s hospital in Juba are hungry,” said Nkubizi. “Triangulating this on the ground … There are many children who will die.”
He explains that families are now walking for hours to reach support after the organization has closed 28 malnutrition centers. UNICEF claims that more than 800 (66%) of malnutrition sites reporting nationwide have reduced staff.
Violence in northern southern Sudan states has worsened the crisis, blocking humanitarian access and leading hundreds of thousands of their agricultural land.
Although a peace agreement in 2018 ended the country’s five -year civil war, the renewed clashes between the national army and militia groups raised fears of a return to large -scale conflicts. In the higher state of the Nile, where violence has resurfaced, the levels of malnutrition are the highest.
The UN said that intensified fights along the white Nile did not mean supplies in the area for more than a month in May, plunging more than 60,000 children already malnutric in a deeper hunger.
In June, the South Sudanese government told the Associated Press that it turned to the American company Fogbow so that the aerial drops meet the needs in the violence areas. Although the company claims to be a humanitarian force, UN workers question the departure of the established system.
The action of the global humanitarian group against Hunger had to abandon warehouses and operations in Fangak, in Jonglei State, after an air bombardment by a doctor without borders who left seven dead in May.
“Our sites in these places are now also flooded, overwhelmed while we are talking,” said Nkubizi.
About 1.6 million people are at risk of moving floods, because submerged agricultural land and harvests have been hungry in the country vulnerable to climate.
“Malnutrition does not only concern food insecurity – cholera epidemics, malaria and bad sanitation aggravates the problem,” explains Shaun Hughes, regional emergency coordinator of the World Food Program.
With more than 60% of the defecation of the outdoor population, the floods transform contaminated water into a major health threat.
At Maban County Hospital near the northern border with Sudan, Moussa Adil, 8 months old, cries hunger in her mother’s arms.
The nutritionist of Moussa, Butros Khalil, says that there is no additional milk for the frail child that evening. The hospital received its last major shipment in March.
US financing discounts have forced international aid groups to reduce the support of this hospital. Khalil and dozens of colleagues have not been paid for six months. “Now we just eat leaves of the bush,” he says, describing how the exorbitant cost of living makes it impossible to feed her family with 20 people.
The neighboring war in Sudan disrupted trade and increased the cost of basic goods. Combined with arrow inflation, economic pressure means that 92% of South Sudanese live below the poverty line – an increase of 12% compared to last year, according to the African Development Bank.
“People get their children out of school, they sell their cattle just to reach both ends, then they become hungry people,” said Hughes.
The action against hunger says that it had to interrupt school feed after the withdrawal of American funding, which makes it fear that children will increase from moderate to dangerous hunger.
In the Maban camps near the Sudan border, refugees say that WFP treasury and dry documents no longer cover the basic needs. With rations divided by two and more than half of the population of the region withdrawn from the eligibility list, many face hunger – some even plan to return to Sudan torn by war.
Critics claim that years of dependence on aid have exposed South Sudan. The government only allocates 1.3% of its health budget – well below the 15% target set by the World Health Organization, according to a recent UNICEF report. Meanwhile, 80% of the health system is funded by foreign donors.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission in South Sudan has recently declared that billions of dollars had been lost due to corruption, civil servants, diverted officials. The government has described the allegations of “absurd”.
The member of the Barney Afako committee said that leaders “violated international laws that force governments to apply a maximum of available resources to carry out rights to food, health and education”.
The chairman of the commission, Yasmin Sooka, said that the funds siphoned by the elites could have built schools, hospitals with staff and food guaranteed for the South Sudanese people.
“Corruption kills South Sudanese. It is not incidental-it is the engine of the collapse of South Sudan, digging its economy, evisible institutions, fueling conflicts and condemning its people to hunger and preventable death, “she said.
While the international community warns against an aggravation of the crisis, it has already reached the floors of the South Sudan hospital and the fragiles of children like Moussa and Adut.
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