LEKUANGOLE, South Sudan (PA) – After nearly a week of hidden conflict, Kallayn Keneng has watched two of her young children die. “They cried and cried and said, ‘Mom, we need food,'” she said. But he had nothing to give. Too fragile to bury her 5-year-old and 7-year-old child after days without food, she covered their bodies with grass and left them in the woods.
Now the 40-year-old is waiting for food aid, one of more than 30,000 people said he was probably hungry in Pibor County in South Sudan. The new finding of international food security experts it means that this could be the first part of the world hungry since one was declared in 2017 in another part of the country, then deepened in the civil war.
South Sudan is one of four countries with areas that could go hungry, the United Nations has warned, along with Yemen, Burkina Faso and northeastern Nigeria.
Pibor County this year recorded deadly local violence and unprecedented flooding that affected relief efforts. During a visit to Lekuangole this month, seven families told the Associated Press that 13 of their children starved to death between February and November.
The head of the Lekuangole government, Peter Golu, said he had received unprecedented reports from community leaders that 17 children had died of starvation there and in surrounding villages between September and December.
The report of the Hunger Review Committee, published this month by the Integrated Food Safety Phase Classification, stops the declaration of hunger due to insufficient data. But it is believed that hunger is occurring, which means that at least 20% of households face extreme food shortages and at least 30% of children are acutely malnourished.
But the South Sudanese government does not support the report’s findings. If there was a famine, it would be seen as a failure, they say.
“It simply came to our notice then. … We are 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 verge of starvation – far less than the 105,000 estimated by the new report by food security experts.
The government also expects 60% of the country’s population, or about 7 million people, to face extreme famine next year, with the worst-hit areas of Warrap, Jonglei and northern Bahr el Ghazal states.
South Sudan is struggling to recover from a five-year civil war. Food security experts say the scale of the hunger crisis has been largely created by fighting. This includes this year’s crises of violence between communities with alleged support from the government and the opposition.
The government “not only denies the severity of what is happening, but denies that its own military policies and tactics are responsible,” said Alex de Waal, author of “Mass Hunger: The History and Future of Famine,” and executive director of the World Foundation for Peace.
More than 2,000 people have been killed this year as a result of localized violence that has been “armed” by people acting in their own interests, said David Shearer, head of the UN mission in South Sudan. Violence has prevented people from cultivating, blocking supply routes, burning markets and killing aid workers.
Families in Lekuangole said their crops had been destroyed by fighting. Now it subsists with leaves and fruits.
During the July violence, Kidrich Korok’s 9-year-old son Martin was separated from his family and spent more than a week in the woods. When he was found, severely malnourished, it was too late.
“He always told me that he would study hard and do something good for me when he grows up,” Korok said, crying. “Even as he was dying, he kept reassuring me that I shouldn’t worry.”
Staff at the 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 disrupted most of the road access to the town of Pibor and its better medical care, forcing some seriously ill children to travel along the river in thin plastic rafts for three days.
Pibor County officials say they do not understand why the government of South Sudan does not recognize the extent of the famine.
“If people say in the (capital) that there are no famines 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 administrative area of Greater Pibor.
In the town of Pibor, malnourished mothers and children wait for hours outside health clinics, hoping for food.
In a joint statement last week, three UN agencies called for immediate access to parts of Pibor County, where people were facing catastrophic levels of hunger.
The world food program has faced challenges in providing aid this year. About 635 metric tons of food were stolen from 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 says it needs more than $ 470 million over the next six months to address the hunger crisis.
Families are now worried about a resurgence of fighting as the dry season approaches.
Placed in a clinic run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Pibor, Elizabeth Girosdh watched her 8-month-old twins fight for breast milk. The 45-year-old lost her crop during the fighting in her village of Verteth in June. One of the twins is severely malnourished.
“Sometimes I try to breastfeed, but I can’t and the babies cry and cry all night,” she said. “If there isn’t enough food, I’m worried I might lose them.”