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1. South Sudan food crisis deepens amid tanking economy
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*South Sudan food crisis deepens amid tanking economy
<http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101565>*
[image: lead photo]NYUMANZI, UGANDA, 1 June 2015 (IRIN) - Through 17 months
of conflict, tens of thousands of people have been killed in South Sudan
and two million more displaced. Schools, health centres and markets have
been looted and destroyed. It took a $1.8 billion humanitarian response
last year for the country to avoid a famine.
And it’s about to get even worse.
At least 40 percent of the country’s population – 4.6 million people –
faces acute food insecurity within the next three months, according to a new
analysis
<http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/IPC_South%20Sudan_April2015_Communication%20Summary-1.pdf>.
While
the most severe shortages are predicted for the country’s northeast where
the fighting has centred, the hunger belt now spreads across much of the
country’s northern half.
At the same time, economists are warning that the combination of conflict
and a global downturn in oil prices – the country’s main source of revenue
– has brought South Sudan’s economy to the brink of collapse. Skyrocketing
costs and a tanking currency are especially threatening to urban
communities where people must buy most of their food. Some can already not
afford to eat.
“All of this means a crisis is arriving very, very quickly,” said Shaun
Hughes, the head of programme for the World Food Programme in South Sudan –
and on a scale the already suffering country has not yet seen.
*On the move*
Ramsey Bol Lang is twice displaced. In December 2013, the 20-year-old was
going to secondary school in Juba when fighting broke out. His
neighborhood, on the capital’s outskirts, was the scene of door-to-door
killings allegedly perpetrated by troops loyal to President Salva Kiir.
Three days later, Lang took advantage of a lull in the shooting to flee
across the city. Though the fighting in the capital ended as rebel soldiers
backing former vice president Riek Machar retreated into the country’s
northeast, Lang decided it wasn’t safe to return to his home and rented a
new place.
Months later, his mother, seven siblings and two cousins arrived in Juba to
live with him. There had been protracted fighting near their home in
northern Unity state and a brother and an uncle had been killed. Lang’s
father had decided it was best to send the rest of the family to Juba.
<http:///Photo/Details/201506011226430772/Hunger-as-well-as-conflict-is-fuelling-the-exodus-from-South-Sudan-to-Uganda>
Photo: Will Boase/IRIN <http://www.irinnews.org/photo>
Hunger, as well as conflict, is fuelling the exodus from South Sudan
Except now, a steep rise in prices means they can longer afford to live in
the capital. “Everything has become expensive there,” Lang said. “If you
want to rent a home, even, it’s too expensive.” Which is why, in late
April, they gathered their belongings and hired a minibus for the
hour-and-a-half drive to the Ugandan border. They were met by officials
from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), who then took them on to a transit
camp. Within a few weeks, they will be permanently resettled in Uganda.
Lang did not want to see his family become refugees. “That is our
homeland,” he said, pointing to South Sudan, its border with Uganda visible
from the Nyumanzi Transit Camp. “I don’t have a home here.” But at least he
will have something to eat.
To stay in Juba was financially impossible. And to move back to the
family’s village in Unity state’s Pariang County meant dealing with food
shortages, in addition to the threat of violence. In the newly released
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which measures food
security and nutrition, Pariang is predicted to reach “crisis” level as
early as this month. And a cluster of counties to its south will likely hit
the “emergency” threshold before the end of July – one level below famine.
“The situation of Juba right now, all over South Sudan, even, it is not
good for us,” Lang said.
Draku Godfrey Uhuru is the centre supervisor at Nyumanzi. Over the past few
weeks, officials have been registering an average of 70 new arrivals to the
camp each day. A month ago it was only 30 or 40.
Uhuru said most of the new refugees have fled from fighting in Unity and
Upper Nile states. But for the first time, a noticeable number are not on
the run from recent battles. Instead, they tell Uhuru, “It is hunger that
is now attacking them.”
*A predictable crisis*
The figures in the new IPC report are jarring. Nearly 70 percent of the
country will not get enough to eat through July. At least 80 percent of the
counties across the country’s north are at a critical level of
malnutrition, which is particularly dangerous for pregnant women and
children. And the report does not even fully account for the people who
might be in the worst position of all – stuck in the midst of ongoing
fighting in Unity and Upper Nile states. Until the clashes stop, it is
impossible for humanitarians to reach them – or even gauge the extent of
their need.
A steep rise in prices means many can no longer afford to live in the
capital.
WFP’s Hughes said the current situation was sadly predictable. In the early
days of the conflict, if South Sudanese did not have enough to eat, they
could sell livestock or barter supplies for food. “As the crisis goes on,
those coping strategies become increasingly depleted,” he said. “They have
nothing left to rely on, no assets left to sell.”
With the arrival of the lean season – the months when people are planting
for August and September harvests – South Sudanese would usually supplement
what food they were able to store from the previous year with goods from
the markets. Except tens of thousands of people were unable to plant last
year because of the fighting. And prices in the market – where markets even
still exist – have shot up.
Barack Kinanga, the International Rescue Committee’s economic recovery and
development coordinator, has seen the price for maize in some parts of the
country surge 70 percent higher than it was at the same time last year. And
he warns, “The prices are likely to rise further and even peak at
unprecedented levels.”
The search for food is driving people across borders, he said. UNHCR has
recorded <http://data.unhcr.org/SouthSudan/country.php?id=229> more than
9,000 new arrivals in both Sudan and Ethiopia over the past month. Uganda
received around 7,000 South Sudanese in May – the most of any month this
year.
Nyankuch Akuma is one of them. Her husband, a soldier, was shot and killed
and she was left on her own outside Bentiu, the capital of Unity state. “It
was so bad. Up to now there was no planting,” which is why she decided to
leave and travel to Uganda. Even before she was placed in a permanent
settlement, Akuma had decided, “I will stay here forever.”
*Economic collapse *
South Sudan’s unprecedented level of hunger is the most alarming signal of
the country’s larger economic collapse. South Sudan’s currency, the pound,
is trading in Juba’s black markets at nine and a half to every dollar –
less than half of its value a year ago. Fuel is scarce. And the casual jobs
that many people rely on for income are disappearing as the currency
depreciates.
It is against that backdrop that the food insecurity has spread beyond the
country’s northeast. The rest of the country also depends on markets during
the lean season, Kinanga said, and “steepening commodity prices are having
a far-reaching effect for the communities not directly affected by the
conflict.”
<http:///Photo/Details/201506011232120321/Some-70-percent-of-new-arrivals-at-Nyumanzi-transit-site-are-under-the-age-of-18>
Photo: Will Boase/IRIN <http://www.irinnews.org/photo>
Some 70 percent of new arrivals at Nyumanzi transit site are under the age
of 18
This includes as many as 600,000 people living in urban areas. And a
sudden rise in food insecurity in towns will force overstretched
humanitarian agencies – now largely focused on rural communities – to
recalibrate their response.
The fighting is the obvious culprit for the country’s economic spiral, said
Dr. Kenyi Spencer, a South Sudanese economist. The government is spending
much-needed reserves on “the war, hardware, this and that. It has displaced
the local economy.” And with long-term consequences.
“There is a real risk the economic choices the government is making now
will destabilize the country for generations to come,” said Emma Vickers, a
campaigner with the corruption watchdog group, Global Witness. “If, when
the conflict ends, there is no money left for infrastructure projects,
education or job creation, South Sudan faces a future where the only choice
for its youth is to pick up arms again.”
At the same time, the country’s oil fields have suffered repeated attacks,
forcing production cuts that the country – which is almost completely
dependent on revenue from oil sales – can ill afford. And international
conditions – including a strengthening dollar and a global drop in oil
prices – are hastening South Sudan’s economic collapse, Spencer said. “All
these have really arrived to put the economy in a bad place right now. In
the next two to three weeks, if nothing happens to change the situation, it
could be catastrophic.”
It already is for the hundreds of thousands of people who are now all but
guaranteed to face some level of food insecurity in the coming months. The
IPC projection that 4.6 million people will see severe food shortages takes
into account the ongoing humanitarian response.
And if the warring parties continue to limit access, as they currently are
in parts of Unity and Upper Nile states, or if requested funding doesn’t
come through, then “the number of people we’ll be able to assist will be
vastly diminished,” Hughes said. WFP, alone, is currently looking at a $230
million funding shortfall. Unless the money comes through, “we simply won’t
have the resources to be able to provide assistance on the scale that’s
required.”
ag/am
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