\n The United Nations warned Tuesday it had received just two percent of the cash needed for South Sudan, a day after experts said 40,000 people are being starved to death.\n<\/p>\n
\n Some war-zone areas are on the brink of famine.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"If we are unable to act now, the situation will be much worse,\" UN aid chief in South Sudan Eugene Owusu said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"About two percent of the $1.3 billion (1.1 billion euros) required to provide life-saving assistance and protection has been received\".\n<\/p>\n
\n On Monday, the UN children's agency UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP), in a joint statement, described some of the worst conditions yet in more than two years of a civil war marked by atrocities and accusations of war crimes, including the blockading of food supplies.\n<\/p>\n
\n Over 2.8 million people need aid, almost a quarter of the country, while in war zone northern areas 40,00 are being starved to death with aid blocked amid violence.\n<\/p>\n
\n For South Sudan, the beginning of the year is \"when the country is traditionally most food secure,\" the UN added.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We are facing widespread food insecurity, malnutrition, displacement and disease,\" Owusu said, pleading for an initial $200 million to fill gaps until May. \"We are facing increasing needs with diminishing resources.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The UN-backed specialised hunger assessment, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, warned in October of a \"concrete risk of famine\" without aid.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Monday, it said areas are most concern were too dangerous for experts to access, meaning it was not possible to gather the statistics needed to declare famine.\n<\/p>\n
\n Civil war erupted in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that have split the poverty-stricken, landlocked country along ethnic lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations warned Tuesday it had received just two percent of the cash needed for South Sudan, a day after experts said 40,000 people are being starved to death. Some war-zone areas are on the brink of famine. \"If we are unable to act now, the situation will be much worse,\" UN aid chief […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-25918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n