War and Famine

"The world should not wait for a famine to be announced while children here are dying. We all have to do more, and quickly, to keep more children alive."
UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake

"Whether or not it is a famine, the point of our job is trying to prevent it from becoming a famine. And if we have to wait where conditions are so bad that it's a famine, it's too late."
Challiss McDonough, World Food Program spokeswoman

"If it's as bad as famine a declaration can have a significant impact on the level of support that goes toward the crisis."
"[Experts wonder if there are regions] people aren't reaching, that the information is even worse than what we're seeing."
Chris Hillbruner, lead food security analyst, FEWSNET

In this Thursday, Jan. 2, 2014 file photo, 7-month-old boy Dhieu Ding Chol, left, and 5-month-old boy Thuch Jong Kuch, 

right, are held by their mothers as they receive treatment for dehydration, vomiting and diarrhea, likely caused by the lack 

of any sanitation where they are now living, at a clinic run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) set up 

in a school building in the town of Awerial, South Sudan. The U.N.’s top official for human rights Navi Pillay told a news 

 conference in South Sudan’s capital Juba on Wednesday, April 30, 2014 that the country is on the verge of catastrophe 

because of a deadly mix of recrimination, hate speech and revenge killings since December and that she is appalled by the 

apparent lack of concern by leaders in South Sudan over the risk of a potential famine. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

FEWSNET is a famine early warning system that was put into place by the American government's aid agency, USAID. And Mr. Hillbruner is in Juba, South Sudan's capital, taking part in an analysis of the situation afflicting the word's newest country, that broke off from greater Sudan through a mutually-agreed-upon secession, after years of conflict and countless lives lost.

He and other health experts have sequestered themselves in a hotel conference room in the capital of South Sudan, deliberating over how severe the hunger situation is in the country, and whether the situation was caused by the violence that broke out in December, qualifying it as a famine situation which would motivate aid agencies and governments to view the situation as dire as it is, not one to set aside until it becomes even more urgent.

Even if the humanitarian emergency that currently presents does not provide sufficient hard data from field studies to accelerate the condition to that of an officially-acknowledged famine, the situation of hunger as currently exemplified by a shortage of food and starvation resulting "is still the worst food security emergency in the world ... there is still huge need", emphasized Mr. Hillbruner.

The more remote locations in South Sudan are not readily accessible in a country with little highway infrastructure other than dirt roads and dirt airstrips that seasonal rains plunge into a morass impossible to navigate. Moreover, because of the conflict situation, aid groups must provide military and political leaders on both the government and rebel sides, of their travel plans, in search of safe passage.

The global heads of the World Food Program and UNICEF made their way to South Sudan to confer with FEWSNET, on the situation. Almost a million children under the age of five live on the verge of starvation, requiring humanitarian food deliveries to address acute malnutrition. At risk of imminent death is an estimated 50,000 children.

In the last famine in Somalia in 2011, an estimated 260,000 people died, half of them perishing even before the formal famine status was officially declared. Along with WFP executive director Ertharin Cousin, Anthony Lake expresses their fear that the world is standing by silently while a repeat of the Somalia tragedy occurs. WFP urgently requires $143-million to maintain the urgent aid flow.

Complicating the urgency of food provision by aid organizations are issues relating to whether food markets are operating and how many crops families plant while violence displacing over a million people destabilize normal lifestyles. Even yet, a similar problem is overtaking Somalia, where 50,000 children are once again in danger of malnutrition in that conflict-rent country.

Analysts working in the field for the agencies collect data on rainfall, livestock numbers, nutrition levels and mortality rates; the data prepared for presentation as the groups set to meet in August for discussions, according to Nina Dodd, nutrition specialist for the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FAO) of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

A famine is defined as two deaths daily per ten thousand people, along with malnutrition rates of over 30 percent, and a near complete loss of livelihoods and assets. "The last thing we want to be accused of is coming out with spicy messages that would help us get more support", stated Rudi Van Aaken, acting head of FAO in Somalia.

"[Still], if the coming season is problematic with too little rain or too much rain ... if that happens the situation will get worse."