Women at a food distribution site in Ulang County in Upper Nile State. Photo Credit: WFP/Gabriela Vivacqua

The World Food Program has suspended food assistance to South Sudan due to insufficient funding.

The UN food agency says it had exhausted all options before suspending food assistance, including halving rations in 2021, leaving families in need with less food to eat.

WFP says, its crisis response and resilience-building development programs were drastically underfunded this year and required 426 million dollars to reach six million food-insecure people this year.

The agency says almost one-third of the country’s population is acutely food insecure South Sudanese and will be left without humanitarian food assistance.

It says these latest reductions to assistance will also impact 178,000 schoolchildren who will no longer receive daily school meals.

The agency regrets that the suspension of aid comes at the worst possible time for the people of South Sudan as the country faces a year of unprecedented hunger.

“We are extremely concerned about the impact of the funding cuts on children, women and men who will not have enough to eat during the lean season. These families have completely exhausted their coping strategies,” WFP Acting Country Director said in a statement issued on Tuesday

Adeyinka Badejo warned that over 60 percent of the population are still in need immediate humanitarian assistance this time.

This is because, he said, they are grappling with severe food insecurity during the lean season, fueled by continuing conflict, severe flooding, localized drought, and soaring food prices exacerbated by the crisis in Ukraine.

In 2022, the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessment warned that 7.74 million people will face severe acute hunger at the height of the lean season between June and August, while 1.4 million children will be acutely malnourished.