US famine monitor warns of new food insecurity in southern Sudan

NAIROBI, June 13 (AFP) — A US-funded famine monitoring agency has warned of serious food shortages in areas of southern Sudan over the next three months and is appealing for more assistance for the poverty-striken region.

A starving Sudanese boy roams a compound run by Doctors Without Borders in Ajiep, Sudan within famine-torn Bahr el Ghazal province in south Sudan, in this July 25, 1998. (AP).

The Famine Early Warning System Network said food insecurity was “extreme” in pockets of Sudan’s northern Bahr el-Ghazal region and “high” in Jonglei and Upper Nile regions.

“The worst-off areas will be northern Bahr el Ghazal and select areas of Jonglei, Upper Nile, Lakes and Unity States,” the network said in a statement received here Monday.

“Poor households and returnees will face significant food gaps between June and August 2005,” it said, referring to the thousands of displaced southern Sudanese expected to return to their homes in the coming months.

Aid groups in the region are gearing up for the return of the displaced following the signing in January of a peace deal between Khartoum and southern rebels that ended what had been Africa’s longest-running civil war.

“Lack of sufficient (international) response may result in the failure of returnees to cultivate, a reduction in cultivation among some of the host population, poor weeding, reduced capacity of host populations to support current and future returnees, and tension between the host and returnee populations,” the famine warning network said.

In March, the World Food Programme appealed for more food to food up 5.5 million people this in Sudan who face food shortage as a result of poor cereal harvest in 2004.

And in April, aid workers and the Roman Catholic church warned millions of people were starving in the the vast region, including tens of thousands of returnees drawn back by the promise of peace and displaced persons fleeing Darfur in the west.