MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd July, 2020) More than 60,000 people have been displaced and are at risk of starvation in South Sudan's Jonglei state and the Greater Pibor Administrative Area amid ongoing intercommunal violence in the region that has prevented farmers from cultivating crops, two United Nations agencies said in a press release on Thursday.
"At the height of the main planting season, insecurity is preventing farmers from going to their fields to cultivate food crops and livestock keepers are not able to follow their traditional migratory patterns to graze their animals," the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations representative in South Sudan, Meshack Malo, said in the press release.
These concerns are shared by the UN World Food Programme, as country director Matthew Hollingworth warned that cattle raiding was having a significant impact on caloric intake in the region.
"We simply cannot replace the calories milk gives to children when livestock is taken and a year's worth of milk is lost, and we barely have sufficient resources to meet current needs," Hollingworth said in the release.
As of January, 45.2 percent of South Sudan's population was estimated to be in conditions of food crisis, emergency, or famine, with Jonglei being one of the most affected regions, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
Violent clashes have continued to rage on in South Sudan despite the appointment of state governors to the country's unity government, led by President Salva Kiir and former rebel military leader Riek Machar, in late June.
