ICRC Says South Sudan Still in Deadly Humanitarian Crisis Year After Peace Agreement

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th September, 2019) The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has expressed its concerns over the fact that the situation in South Sudan not only has not improved since concluding a peace deal last year, but has even worsened in terms of violence and starvation among other humanitarian terrors pervading the war-torn country.

In September 2018, South Sudan President Salva Kiir signed a power-sharing deal with rebel leader Riek Machar to end the nation's five year civil war, and the two leaders signed a formal peace agreement.

"The number of patients with injuries from violence admitted to our [ICRC] surgical units have increased since the signing of the peace deal. From October 2017 to June 2018, 526 patients were admitted, mostly with gunshot wounds. The same period a year later (October 2018 to June 2019) we had 688, an increase of nearly 25 percent. In only one week in April, the ICRC evacuated by air 39 patients with weapon wounds to a hospital we support, forcing us to increase the number of beds in the unit by a third to accommodate the needs," the organization wrote on its website Wednesday.

The Red Cross delegation in South Sudan's capital of Juba also saw no improvements or changes in the country's health care system, food supplies or family reunions.

"Families have been torn apart by decades of conflict. Today, the ICRC is searching for more than 4,200 South Sudanese whose relatives have reported them as missing. Tragically, with four million South Sudanese still displaced inside the country and across its borders, the number of people who do not know where their loved ones are is likely much higher," the statement read.

According to the United Nations' report published earlier in the day, death from starvation and nutrition-related disease threatens more than half of South Sudan's population of 11 million.

It also estimated that 10,000 people, about 90 percent of the population, face famine-like conditions, in which starvation, death and severe malnutrition are present.

The ICRC, which had been present in South Sudan since its separation from Sudan in 2011, predicts more violence in the country despite the peace treaty.