South Sudan faces growing crisis amid ‘forgotten conflict’: ICRC

ICRC says food shortages and COVID in South Sudan compounding ‘one of the most complex humanitarian crises anywhere’.

The director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that South Sudan is “a forgotten conflict” facing a “humanitarian crisis” made worse by the pandemic, while the United Nations chief cautioned that 60 percent of people in the world’s newest nation are “increasingly hungry”. South Sudan has been struggling to recover from five years of war that at least one study says killed almost 400,000 people. A coalition government formed last year between President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar is implementing a peace deal behind schedule, while deadly violence continues in parts of the country. The ICRC’s Robert Mardini, who visited South Sudan last week, called it “one of the most complex humanitarian crises anywhere”.