The European Union is providing $10.4 million in humanitarian funding to the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) in South Sudan as food and nutrition support to tens of thousands of people facing a persistent hunger crisis in the country.
The contribution will provide life-saving food and nutrition assistance to more than 700,000 vulnerable people, including people who had to flee their homes, malnourished pregnant and nursing women, children under the age of five and refugees living in South Sudan.
Of this, 520,000 people will receive cash assistance to buy food and basic commodities from local markets, thereby allowing households to acquire what they need the most and helping rural economies by injecting much-needed cash into them.
“Millions of people in South Sudan need food assistance,” Christos Stylianides, the European Union’s Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management. “With this aid package, we are helping the most vulnerable, particularly women and children,” he said in a statement issued in Nairobi on Tuesday.
“Although the food security situation has slightly improved, there is an urgent need to continue providing life-saving support to people at risk of hunger. Food assistance saves lives and can help build communities’ resilience to allow them to sustain themselves in the future” said WFP Assistant Executive Director for Partnership and Advocacy said Ute Klamert.
South Sudan’s food security situation remains dire with 4.5 million people needing food and nutrition support until the end of the year.
The number of people in need is projected to go up to 5.5 million people from January 2020.
January and the intervening months are the time of the year when households face additional hardship as food reserves from their subsistence farming start to deplete.
JK/as/APA