ON Monday February 20, the UN declared a famine in parts of Unity State, in the world’s newest country of South Sudan. Aid charities, issuing the distressingly-familiar disaster appeals, warned that 100,000 people are facing starvation in Unity, and a further million people are classified as being ‘on the brink of famine’.
This famine has not sprung from an ‘act of God’ – extreme weather or natural disaster – but from three years of escalating conflict between supporters of the President Salva Kiir, and former Vice President Riek Machar. More than three million people – a quarter of the population – have been displaced, many have fled to neighbouring countries, and the economy has collapsed.
“The famine is man-made,” says Jennie Chinembiri, Africa and Caribbean Secretary for the World Mission Council of the Church of Scotland.