Research by a global food security body, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), on Thursday indicated that South Sudan would face a serious risk of famine by end of 2015.
The research followed an earlier survey which classified 30,000 people as being in a food security catastrophe.
Hunger in the world’s newest state has grown steadily worse in the nearly two years since a political crisis led to fighting that reopened ethnic fault lines between President Salva Kiir’s Dinka people and ethnic Nuer forces loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar.
The two have signed a series of peace deals but fighting rages on.
The IPC, whose members include the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), said famine had not been officially declared because it was hard to get data from conflict zones.
“There is a great concern that famine may exist in the coming months, but it may not be possible to validate it at that time due to lack of evidence as the result of limited access to the affected areas and populations,” it said.
Humanitarian groups have been forced to pull out of parts of oil-rich Unity State, one of the worst-hit areas, and they say displaced families are surviving on just one meal a day- in extreme cases, people fleeing violence survive by eating water lilies.
Reacting to the research, WFP Country Director Joyce Luma said “this is the start of the harvest and we should be seeing a significant improvement in the food security situation across the country.
“Unfortunately this is not the case in places like southern Unity State, where people are on the edge of a catastrophe that can be prevented,” Luma said.
The research marked the first time IPC had categorised South Sudan as being on its fifth phase-catastrophic food insecurity nation
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