The worst case of food security #southsudan

Members of the United Nations
Security Council (UNSC) have described the current food
insecurity situation in South Sudan as the "worst in the
world".
During its Friday session chaired by Rwanda's Eugene-
Richard Gasana, the UNSC further expressed deep alarm
that the crisis in the young nation may soon reach the
threshold of famine, citing continued conflict, civilian
targeting, and displacement.
Nearly 1.5 million people, aid agencies say, have been
forced out of their homes since violence broke out in South
Sudan late last year, while over 50,000 children below five
years risk dying from malnutrition this year.
However, the 15-member Council urged all UN member
states, who together pledged more than $618 million in new
funding for both South Sudan and the region in May at a
humanitarian pledging conference in Oslo, Norway, to
swiftly fulfil those pledges and increase their commitments.
The funds, they further stressed, are critically needed now
to provide life-saving assistance in view of the increasingly
dire humanitarian situation in the world's youngest nation.
LOOMING FAMINE
At least 3.9 million people in South Sudan risk facing
starvation that could reach "catastrophic" levels if peace
negotiations were unable to stem ongoing fighting in the
country, the US warned on Friday.
"This is not a crisis caused by drought or flood; it is a
calamity created by conflict," said US secretary of state
John Kerry.
"South Sudan's leaders need to make choices and they need
to make them now if they're going to pull their country back
from the brink of famine," he added.
South Sudan recently marked only its third independence
anniversary, but a conflict fuelled by ethnic and personal
power struggles is already threatening to tear the country
apart. Even the US, a close ally of South Sudan, is
struggling to pull the latter from the brink of civil war.
Throughout the conflict, however, the US has spoken out
against killing of innocent civilians, lack of access to those
in need of aid as well as the failure by South Sudanese
leaders to end the ongoing violence.