As international aid funds are cut, the burden of the war in Ukraine is added to exacerbate the food crisis in the country where more than half the population needs humanitarian aid
The latest report by the World Food Program and the FAO – made public a few days ago, says that the food crisis is dramatically worsening almost everywhere, from Afghanistan to Yemen, including many African countries. It will get worse: the consequences brought by the war in Ukraine will add to the environmental devastation and the picture will worsen in the second half of the year. 750,000 people are classified as “IPC5.”, an acronym – Integrated food security Phase Classification – that is the international yardstick for assessing food crises. The fifth level is the highest: it is famine, death by starvation.
The dossier analyzes many countries. But the country that is mentioned most often is South Sudan. “For sure” says Stefano Antichi, 44, INTERSOS head of mission in the world’s youngest country, born after an endless war. And why? It is not only the war in Ukraine, or the blockade of grain exports. “The war weighs and will weigh but the frightening food crisis here in South Sudan depends on so many other things, especially the very heavy cut in assistance funds, international funds which were partly foretold. But the results for millions of people do not change.” In South Sudan without distributions, people cannot make it. More in detail: nearly five million people are at great risk of subsistence. Added to these are nearly one hundred thousand who have crossed the “IPC5” threshold. They are risking their lives. Not tomorrow. Now, right now.
“If nearly 70 percent of the population needs daily support to eat, cutting aid makes the picture frighteningly worse” Stefano Antichi continues. Certainly the reduction in funding was in the air. For after the struggling independence from Sudan – marked by a high-intensity war – the country, very rich in oil, has been sustained by the international effort. But the condition of the people has not changed. It is at the bottom of all rankings: for assistance, access to water, education. Soon after independence an internal conflict began, between different groups, particularly the Dinka and Nuer, that cost tens of thousands more deaths. And which has never ended. So no social infrastructure was built, no schools, no hospitals.
“We have been here for 16 years,” Antichi resumes, “and by now we have learned how to do it. Take Bor, for example, only 140 kilometers from the capital. Now there is a road, it took them ten years to complete it. But we always got there. Maybe with trips that could take weeks. But we always went there to dig wells and to teach how to dig wells. To teach how to manage an indispensable resource like water.” Water that was brought into schools, because education is another front on which we are engaged. And even just getting children to wash their hands here is an achievement. To be defended, since cuts have hit education as well.