South Sudan faces famine risk

South Sudan faces a serious risk of famine by the end of this year and 30,000 people are already classified as being in a food security catastrophe, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said.

The IPC, whose members include the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), said famine had not been officially declared because it was hard to get data from conflict zones.

Hunger in the world’s newest state has grown steadily worse in the nearly two years since a political crisis led to fighting that reopened ethnic fault lines between president Salva Kiir’s Dinka people and ethnic Nuer forces loyal to former vice president Riek Machar.