Conflict causing food insecurity in South Sudan's 'stable' areas

The ongoing conflict in South Sudan is affecting food security in some of the country's more “stable” states, the head of United Nations peacekeeping operation said on Thursday.

“Dwindling provisions arriving in the town and skyrocketing food prices have meant that places like Aweil, which are generally peaceful, have suffered the effects of the conflict taking part in other parts of the country,” said David Shearer, the head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), during a visit to Aweil in the country's north.

“It is imperative that fighting stops, so the citizens of the world's newest nation can live in peace and enjoy the benefits of independence,” he added.

The insecurity has directly affected the cost of goods in greater Aweil. Shearer heard from UN humanitarian agencies working in the region how many families had migrated north to Sudan because they could either not produce crops or could not afford the high price of staple foods in the market.

Those agencies have stepped in to provide emergency humanitarian aid in a region where the UN Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO) says 52 percent of people are “food insecure.”

It is imperative that fighting stops, so the citizens of the world's newest nation can live in peace and enjoy the benefits of independence

The Governor of Aweil state, Ronald Ruay Deng, said his administration was doing all it could to “move our people from dependency on emergency food aid to a more resilient rural agricultural” model of production, including the piloting of a new community farming approach to feed the most vulnerable people.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) began moving food assistance to reach famine-hit and food-insecure people in South Sudan by using a newly opened humanitarian corridor announced by the Government of Sudan earlier this week.

“This new route will allow WFP to regularly reach famine-affected people in South Sudan with food assistance and help to avert the consequences of starvation,” said WFP Sudan Representative and Country Director Matthew Hollingworth.

On Thursday, the first convoy of 27 trucks carrying an initial 1,200 metric tons of sorghum started moving from El Obeid in central Sudan towards Bentiu in South Sudan. The convoys will take at least five days to complete the 500 kilometre journey.

In the next few weeks, WFP plans to deliver 11,000 metric tons of sorghum – including 1,000 metric tons donated by the Government of Sudan – in seven convoys of 30 to 40 trucks. This is enough food to feed 300,000 people for three months.

It comes as monitors of the country's troubled peace agreement said that South Sudanese government troops had burned thousands of civilians' homes late last year, making some of the strongest allegations yet against security forces in the three-year civil war.

The new report found that three villages in the southern Yei region visited by investigators had been abandoned and destroyed.

"In most cases the buildings were deliberately set on fire by government forces," the report says. At least 3,000 homes were burned in a single village.

Satellite data from Amnesty International shows about 2,000 structures were destroyed along a highway near Yei between late December and January.

Government forces denied UN officials and investigators access to one Yei village, and government officials blamed rebels and wildfires for the destruction, but investigators say they found that unlikely.