Seven and a half million people need food assistance in South Sudan this year. The UN’s humanitarian chief told the Security Council on Friday that he fears his next briefing will speak of famine. Nobody with the power to prevent it appears to be paying much attention.

Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, delivered a blunt assessment to the Council: conflict is up, displacement is up, hunger is up, disease is up, attacks on aid workers are up. Funding is down. Two out of every three South Sudanese need humanitarian support. The $1.46 billion response plan is 22 percent funded.

A Disaster on Repeat

South Sudan declared independence in 2011. It descended into civil war two years later. A famine in 2017 was eventually reversed through an enormous humanitarian mobilization. A peace agreement in 2018 was supposed to break the cycle. It hasn’t.

Fighting between the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-in-Opposition has intensified since late last year. Opposition forces seized government outposts in Jonglei State in December. A retaliatory military offensive in January displaced more than 280,000 civilians. An additional 110,000 fled into Ethiopia. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has reported more than 160 civilian deaths since late December; the UN Commission on Human Rights suggested the true toll may be significantly higher after bodies were discovered during road works in Jonglei.

The war in neighboring Sudan compounds the disaster. Fletcher told the Council that 439,000 Sudanese refugees and 917,000 South Sudanese returnees have crossed into the country. In the border town of Renk, more than 30,000 people arrived in three months, nearly two-thirds of them women. Thousands remain stuck in a transit center with limited services. Older people are dying of severe malnutrition.

‘Slaughtered Like Goats’

Fletcher spent much of his recent visit to South Sudan in Jonglei State, where the destruction is most acute. In Akobo, a town that previously hosted an estimated 270,000 people, government forces issued a 72-hour ultimatum in March ordering civilians, UN personnel, and aid organizations to leave. Clashes followed. The hospital Fletcher had visited weeks earlier — where surgeons treated gunshot wounds and performed amputations on patients who had walked for days — was stripped bare. Medicines, equipment, beds: all looted. Nutrition centers were destroyed.

Women in Jonglei told him their homes had been burned and people had been “slaughtered like goats.” A grandmother carried her paralyzed 19-year-old granddaughter for days as they fled. Others pushed disabled family members in wheelbarrows. According to the World Health Organization, 1.35 million people across Jonglei have lost access to healthcare after 26 facilities were destroyed or forced to close. Cholera is spreading. Measles persists.

A Peacekeeping Mission in Retreat

The UN peacekeeping mission, UNMISS, is contracting at the moment it is most needed. Budget cuts have reduced operational capacity by 24 to 30 percent, according to Anita Kiki Gbeho, the newly appointed mission chief, who replaced Nicholas Haysom following his death earlier this month. A temporary base in Akobo closed in April because of funding shortfalls — precisely the area where security gaps are most dangerous.

Gbeho told the Council that peacekeepers can respond to immediate violence but cannot sustain a longer-term protective presence. Diminished mine-clearance capacity has delayed humanitarian convoys. Fewer patrols mean less early warning and eroded trust with local communities.

The Security Council must vote to renew UNMISS’s mandate before it expires on April 30. Those negotiations are unfolding as the US, the largest financial contributor to UN peacekeeping, pushes for missions to be more “cost-effective and streamlined” — language that rarely translates into better protection for civilians in countries like South Sudan.

The Familiar Math of Failure

Fletcher asked the Security Council for three things: unhindered humanitarian access, flexible funding through the lean season, and pressure on the warring parties to respect international humanitarian law.

The gap between ask and delivery is wide. Of the $1.46 billion sought, donors have provided roughly $321 million. Meanwhile, checkpoints impose fees on aid convoys, air access is routinely denied, and aid workers are forced to evacuate contested areas.

All of this is unfolding against a backdrop of global distraction. The Iran war dominates headlines. European governments are consumed by political upheaval. South Sudan — landlocked, impoverished, lacking the strategic resources that command attention — competes for coverage it rarely wins.

“Humanitarian action can save lives,” Fletcher told the Council. “Only peace can end this crisis.” South Sudan has been hearing that formulation for thirteen years. The peace keeps failing. The funding keeps shrinking. The famines keep arriving.

Sources