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The United Nations agency said that heavy rains caused rivers to flow and flooded homes and farms in 8 of the country’s 10 states.
The United Nations stated that since May, at least 623,000 people in South Sudan have been affected by widespread flooding, and many have been forced to flee their homes.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated in a briefing on Thursday that houses and farms in eight of the country’s 10 states were flooded by heavy rains and rivers burst their banks.
The emergency response agency stated that Jonglei and Tuanjie were the hardest hits, accounting for 58% of the affected population.
It added that rescuers are using canoes and boats to reach the trapped people. With food prices soaring, more than two-thirds of the affected areas are now at risk of starvation, a 15% increase since August.
“Schools, homes, sanitation facilities and water sources have been flooded, affecting people’s access to basic services,” the note reads.
“For humanitarian organizations, physical access remains a major challenge in assessing and responding to the needs of the people affected by flooding.”
Some families fled to the capital, Juba, while others set up temporary camps along the highway, grabbing very little property from the ruins of dilapidated thatched huts.
In some parts of the country, violent conflicts between rival communities have forced tens of thousands of people to leave their homes, while also complicating emergency rescuers’ efforts to help affected communities.
The United Nations team has been working hard to provide assistance to Warrap, a northwestern state suffering from ethnic violence, which is now fighting the measles outbreak.
At the same time, OCHA stated that due to the fighting that broke out in June, about 80,000 people were driven out of their homes in Western Equatoria State in the southwest of the country, some of whom fled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The agency issued a warning last month about limited supplies and funding shortages, saying it had received only 54% of the $1.7 billion needed to pay for the country’s projects.
The agency said last month that the shortage of funds also forced the United Nations World Food Program to suspend food assistance to more than 100,000 displaced people in South Sudan, and warned that unless more cash is received, it will reduce further.
According to data from the World Bank in 2018, four-fifths of South Sudan’s 11 million people live in “absolute poverty”, and more than 60% of its population suffers from severe hunger due to the combined effects of conflict, drought and floods.
Since independence from Sudan in 2011, this young country has been in the throes of a prolonged economic and political crisis and is struggling to recover from the aftermath of the five-year civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people.
Although the 2018 ceasefire and the power-sharing agreement between President Salva Kiir and his deputy, Ke Machar, remain basically valid, it is undergoing severe tests and has made little progress in fulfilling the terms of the peace process.
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