Great Hunger: South Sudan is at Tipping Point

A general election has long been avoided in South Sudan. It was first scheduled for 2015, but it was postponed, initially, to 2018, then to 2021, then to 2023, then to 2024, and then, finally, to 2026, which ostensibly remains the plan today. Whether or not it will actually happen then is unclear, but history would raise doubts about that. In other words, South Sudan has been trapped in transition for many years now. Kiir’s power as president has been successfully consolidated, but his health has reportedly been worsening lately, so elites are gearing up for the scramble for power that will inevitably follow his retirement or demise. Kiir, for his part, is laying the path for a successor of his choosing—among other acts to this end, he has arrested and charged his long-term rival Machar with treason—and he is otherwise threatening the power-sharing arrangement that ended the civil war in the first place. Violence is thus breaking out now, and a return to outright civil war is possible.

The consequences have already been terrible for the people of South Sudan. Kiir’s government forces have been attacking opposition forces in the northeastern state of Upper Nile in particular, which, in turn, has displaced large numbers of people and restricted the flow of aid into the area. This means that most counties in the state are facing extreme food insecurity, with two counties teetering on the edge of outright famine. It is only in the few counties that have not seen violence, in fact, that food security has improved, with crop production recovering somewhat and humanitarian activities allowed to function more properly. There surely is a lesson within that observation.

It is not only Upper Nile state that is suffering. Supply networks throughout all of South Sudan have been badly disrupted by the simmering conflict, meaning food imports from neighboring countries are down. The economy is in a terrible state, the currency’s value is on the floor, and hyperinflation is ensuring the food that is available is, for most people, unaffordable. The war in neighboring Sudan has badly affected South Sudan, too, with more than a million returnees and refugees entering South Sudan as a consequence of the fighting, which has placed greater strain on already-stretched resources within the new country. South Sudan’s oil exports, a crucial source of income for the country, have also been hit by the Sudanese war, as one of the main pipelines transporting South Sudanese oil travels through its northerly neighbor. All of which is to say, there are numerous factors ensuring that this food crisis will not be resolved easily.

“The toll on the civil populations of this crisis is massive, because these are multiple problems that are coming together,” Daniel Akech, the senior analyst for South Sudan at the International Crisis Group, told me recently. “The civil war itself is contributing to this humanitarian crisis. When the civil war happened in 2013, more than four million people were displaced from their homes—mostly in Upper Nile, because that’s where the initial days of the conflicts took place. Half of them went to neighboring countries and half of them stayed. Those who stayed are just living in temporary settlements. Those who went to neighboring countries, mainly to Sudan—that’s the closest area for people in Upper Nile—have been pushed back by the ongoing war in Sudan, which started in April 2023. So you have these people who went to Sudan seeking safety, and now they are being pushed back to an area that is not ready to receive them.”

Ethnic tensions have exacerbated the problems for those people who stayed within South Sudan following their displacement. “Some of them went to what they call Protection of Civilians (P.O.C.) sites for the U.N. in Upper Nile state, as well as in Unity state and other areas,” explained Akech. “This is where they were hosting I.D.P.s [internally displaced persons] that could not be reintegrated back into the country because of the ethnic dimensions of this. In some areas, if your community is affiliated with the opposition, then you don’t feel safe to actually stay outside of the U.N. protection.”

Making a Bad Situation Worse

South Sudan is especially vulnerable to climate shocks, which, if not for the years of conflict in the country, would not prove to be as devastating as they are. But as things stand, the climate crisis is placing enormous strain upon the country and its people. Flooding is a particular threat, affecting 1.4 million people last year alone and seeing 380,000 of them displaced, which, in turn, places greater pressure upon the places where they end up. There are too many people seeking too little resources, which is itself a driver of conflict. The climate crisis is making a bad situation worse.

“The flooding has made it difficult for people to engage in the local production that they were able to do five years ago,” said Akech. “But there are areas, say in Aweil, where I just came from, where people, because of the closures of trade networks, are resorting to try to produce, but it’s never enough because the population is massive. Recurrent flooding has actually shrunk productive lands. This has also generated lots of problems. Tensions around competition for lands for agriculture.”

South Sudan is hugely reliant on aid, but that, too, has taken a hit in recent years—South Sudan’s humanitarian appeal, according to the U.N.’s Financial Tracking Service (F.T.S.), is just a touch above 20 percent funded today. The Trump administration’s attacks on aid, and also his climate denialism, are clear threats to the prospect of South Sudan receiving what it needs to respond to climate shocks and other crises, but Trump is just one part of the problem. South Sudan’s government lacks the capacity to allocate resources appropriately, so, even if money was to flow into the country, much of it would be lost to corruption and inefficiency, while a more general donor fatigue has set in anyway.

“South Sudan has been at war since 2013, and donors were feeling that there was so little return on their investments,” explained Akech. “You are seeing similar humanitarian crises happening inside Sudan, in D.R.C. [Democratic Republic of the Congo] and even in CAR [Central African Republic]. So these areas are competing for attention. And [South Sudanese] leaders keep manufacturing violence and insecurity, so there has been a general fatigue among these people who were channeling support. So it’s not entirely to blame on Trump, but, of course, the drastic aid cuts have exacerbated this situation which was already unfolding.”

For all the pressures it faces, the U.N. has been delivering limited aid and services, while South Sudanese people have themselves been working to ease the suffering. “Civil society groups from the communities are taking it upon themselves,” said Akech, “including some people in the diaspora helping also by sending support in areas that were affected by flooding. I have seen many of these groups actually helping, and it has prevented a disaster that would have been worse than what had happened in the 1960s [when flooding was also extreme].”

People are responding to the food crisis and the climate shocks in whatever ways they can, but, fundamentally, South Sudan’s problems cannot be solved for as long as conflict is allowed to rage. “Yes, climate shock is a big deal,” Akech said. “But, at the same time, when you have the government bombing civilians, that’s more immediate. When climate shock is something that actually works gradually, it’s not an emergency that actually will kill people this morning. Whereas government helicopters can just fly in and drop bombs. So [the climate crisis is] exacerbating [things], but it’s not the cause of the suffering. Why are these people desperate in the first place? Insecurity. An ongoing active war that is displacing people massively. And that is really the conversation we don’t want to lose. This is a much bigger impact. It’s coming from the insecurity which is manufactured by these leaders.”