Nearly eight million people in South Sudan — the world's youngest nation — are at risk of acute hunger, according to a United Nations report published this week that warns of an "irreversible humanitarian catastrophe" if immediate action is not taken. The figure represents 56 percent of the country's population, and is being driven by escalating armed conflict, economic collapse, climate-related shocks, and the spillover of fighting from neighbouring Sudan. The Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Programme (WFP), and UNICEF have jointly called on the international community to respond urgently.
The crisis is particularly acute for children. The number of children between six months and five years old suffering from acute malnutrition has risen by 100,000 over the past six months to a total of 2.2 million. An estimated 700,000 of those children are considered at grave risk of dying. Many of the nutritional services that would normally treat them have been damaged or shut down as a result of ongoing fighting, while supply shortages and funding gaps have further reduced access to life-saving care.
A particularly stark illustration of the crisis is playing out in Nyatim, a swamp-encircled village in Jonglei state in the country's northeast, where tens of thousands of civilians — including pregnant women, elderly residents, and young children — fled after government forces advanced on the town of Lankien in February, days after an airstrike struck a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders. Residents described surviving on leaves and roots, with no clean water and mounting deaths. Despite repeated requests from both Doctors Without Borders and the WFP, South Sudanese authorities denied permission for aid to enter the area. "It was a 'no' from local and national authorities and from the military," said the head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan. The WFP, unable to access the area by road or river, has resorted to airdrops to a nearby community, delivering over 400 metric tons of food since March.
The renewed violence stems from a long-running political and ethnic feud between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar, whose rivalry plunged the country into a civil war that killed an estimated 400,000 people before a fragile peace agreement in 2018 brought them into a unity government. Machar has since been suspended and is now on trial in the capital, Juba, on charges of murder, treason, and crimes against humanity, which he denies. Armed groups loyal to him have clashed repeatedly with government forces in recent months, raising fears of a return to full-scale civil war.
The deliberate obstruction of aid has compounded an already catastrophic situation. Both government and opposition forces have historically been accused of weaponising humanitarian assistance — diverting supplies or blocking access to territory held by rivals. The pattern, long documented in South Sudan, means that civilians on both sides of the conflict are paying the heaviest price. Aid workers describe being overwhelmed, with field hospitals rapidly expanding capacity and screening revealing that more than half of children in some accessible communities are acutely malnourished. With funding gaps growing and access shrinking, humanitarian agencies warn that without an immediate international response, the window to prevent mass loss of life is closing fast.