
The country
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 and is the world’s newest independent nation. The country is located in East-Central Africa, bordering Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. Its capital is Juba. South Sudan covers a land area of 644,329 square kilometers. As of 2024, the country has an estimated population of around 12.4 million people.
The humanitarian situation
South Sudan is in the midst of a dire humanitarian crisis driven by years of brutal civil war. Nearly 400,000 South Sudanese died as a result of the conflict that began in December 2013. Atrocities and attacks on civilians, including widespread sexual violence, defined the civil war. More than half of South Sudan's population is facing crisis or worse levels of hunger and in need of urgent humanitarian aid. Extensive flooding, violence and disease outbreak continue to impact people across the country.
With 4.3 million people forcibly displaced, South Sudan has the highest proportion - one third - of its population displaced of any country in Africa. More than 2.3 million people have fled to neighboring countries. Most of them are now in Uganda, which hosts 1 million South Sudanese refugees. 2 million people are internally displaced. 700,000 people were fresh displaced in 2021, another 600,000 in 2022, 337,000 due to conflict and violence. In addition, South Sudan hosts some 337,000 refugees and asylum-seekers.
Continued insecurity across Upper Nile State is still forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee their homes. The situation is compounded by the war in Sudan, which has led to more than 866,000 people fleeing across the border to South Sudan. The war in the neighboring country, which erupted more than ninenteen months ago, has profound regional implications.
According to humanitarian sources, aid agencies working in South Sudan are stretched to capacity as there is already not enough food, clean water, sanitation facilities, shelter, healthcare, or protection services in transit centers, existing displacement sites, refugee settlements and host communities into which vulnerable people from Sudan are arriving. Humanitarian organizations in South Sudan have called for urgent funding to ensure continued support for onward transportation for people fleeing the Sudan conflict to South Sudan.
Soaring rates of severe malnutrition, acute hunger, and deteriorating health conditions are threatening the lives and well-being of millions of people in the country, with the situation aggravated by weather extremes related to the climate crisis.
South Sudan is facing a major hunger crisis. As of November 2024, an estimated 6.3 million people are classified as IPC Phase 3 or higher (Crisis or worse). Of this total, 1.71 million people face critical levels of acute food insecurity - classified as IPC Phase 4 (Emergency) - and an additional 41,000 people face catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity or IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe).
South Sudan is one of only five countries and territories in the world that face catastrophic levels of hunger, according to IPC assessments. South Sudanese women, men, and children in Phase 5 (Catastrophe) include 10,000 people in Malakal County (Upper Nile State) and an estimated 31,000 South Sudanese returnees who fled Sudan because of the ongoing war.
While the total number of people projected to experience crisis levels of hunger or worse will decrease slightly to 6.1 million people during the harvest and post-harvest period from December 2024 to March 2025, the hunger situation is expected to deteriorate further during the 2025 lean between April and July, with an estimated 7.69 million people projected to be in Phase 3 or worse.
Meanwhile, nearly 2.1 million children under the age of five are at risk of malnutrition, up from 1.65 million. The total includes 650,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM), who require urgent medical attention.
South Sudan is also one of the countries badly affected by climate change. Dry spell and flooding contribute to people’s food insecurity situation. Consecutive years of record flooding have led to widespread displacement, loss of farmland and destruction of livelihoods.
Severe flooding continues to plague the country in 2024. As of mid-year, South Sudan was preparing for the worst floods in 60 years. According to government officials, UN agencies, and independent research groups, South Sudan was likely to experience a major flooding event in the second half of 2024, threatening to exacerbate an already severe humanitarian crisis. Major flooding was expected to cause widespread displacement. Humanitarian agencies were planning for a scenario in which more than 3 million people would be affected and 2.4 million would be in need of humanitarian assistance.
As of November, flooding has impacted approximately 1.4 million people in 44 of South Sudan's 78 counties and the Abyei Administrative Area. More than 379,000 people have been displaced by the floods. Large swathes of the country are under water year-round, and sudden flooding has hit new and unlikely areas.
Torrential rains and subsequent flooding across South Sudan in 2022 adversely affected more than 1 million people. The floods displaced tens of thousands, resulted in an unknown number of deaths, and damaged or destroyed agricultural land, houses, health care centers, schools, and water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure across the country.
The UN estimates that 9 million people will be in need of humanitarian assistance in 2024, a slight decrease compared to 2023. Among those requiring humanitarian aid this year will be 4.9 million children. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 9.4 million people - three quarters of the population - were in need of humanitarian aid or protection in 2023.
The humanitarian response in South Sudan will require US$1.8 billion in 2024 to provide humanitarian aid to the 6 million people targeted. The 2024 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for South Sudan is targeting only the most vulnerable children, women, and men, meaning the needs of millions of others will remain unmet as humanitarian operations in South Sudan are severely underfunded. As of November 2024, this year's HRP is just 60 percent covered by funding.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that hundreds of thousands of people in South Sudan are at risk of going without life-saving assistance unless additional funding for the humanitarian response is received without delay.
As of January 2024, the 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) for South Sudan, which required $2.1 billion to support 7.4 million people, was only 51 percent funded.
In 2024, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) seeks $1.4 billion to meet the needs of 2.3 million South Sudanese refugees living in five neighboring countries - Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRP).
Over the past two years, humanitarian operations for South Sudanese refugees have been severely underfunded. In 2023, only 24 percent of the required funding was received, far short of what is needed to ensure that all South Sudanese refugees can live in dignity. In 2022, only a third of the needs were met.
The security situation
South Sudan has not held a presidential election since independence in 2011. After a power crisis erupted in 2013, South Sudan descended into conflict that has spread across much of the country, killing hundreds of thousands of people. A series of broken peace agreements and putative coalition governments have perpetuated competition between rival militias and a war economy that continues to fuel instability and violence.
An initial peace agreement signed in 2015 failed. After many delays, a revitalized agreement signed in 2018 led to the formation of a Transitional Government of National Unity in February 2020. Progress in implementing the peace agreement has been slow, however, as the parties quarrel over the division of power.
Elections had been postponed to December 2024 and the transition period had been extended until February 2025. In September 2024, the South Sudanese presidency postponed elections again and extended the country's transitional period by 24 months - until February 2027. The decision is seen as a collective failure by the country's leaders to create the conditions necessary to hold credible and peaceful elections.
The United Nations has endorsed the extension of the transitional period, albeit with regret and disappointment. The UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the African Union (AU) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) have called on all parties to break the perpetual cycle of successive transitions and to put the interests of South Sudan and its people first.
South Sudan continues to be the one of the most violent context for aid workers in the world. According to the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD), 34 humanitarian workers were killed in the country in 2023. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says ongoing insecurity and violence against civilians and humanitarian workers affects the delivery of life-saving emergency supplies to people in an already dire situation. The work of humanitarian organizations is further hampered by access restrictions, bureaucratic obstacles, widespread crime, and inter-community violence.
Delivering humanitarian assistance to crisis-affected populations is particularly challenging in the country due to insecurity and the lack of basic infrastructure. Threats and attacks jeopardize the safety of aid workers and prevent relief organizations from reaching people in need. Criminal activities, such as ambushes and looting of humanitarian trucks and assets, often force temporary pauses in humanitarian operations.
According to United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the number of civilians affected by violence in South Sudan increased sharply at the end of 2022, compared to both the previous quarter and the same period in 2021. Violence from October to December 2022 was concentrated in Upper Nile, Warrap and Jonglei. The number of civilians harmed increased by 87 percent, compared to the same period in 2021.
UNMISS reports this rise was accompanied by a disturbing increase in abductions and conflict-related sexual violence — which have gone up by 464 percent and 360 percent, respectively, when compared to the previous year. However, the overall number of incidents of violence for the entire 2022 decreased when compared to 2021.
According to UNMISS, in the fourth quarter of 2023, at least 862 civilians were directly affected by violence - 406 killed, 293 injured, 100 abducted, and 63 subjected to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), which represents a 11 percent decrease compared with the same period in 2022, largely due to the overall decline of violence in the Greater Upper Nile region.
In its latest quarterly report on human rights, UNMISS stated that attacks against civilians - driven primarily by subnational armed violence involving community-based militias and/or civil defense groups - continue. Between January and March 2024, the Mission documented 240 incidents of violence, killings, injuries, abductions and conflict-related sexual violence affecting 913 civilians nationwide. This represents a 24 percent increase in the number of violent incidents compared to the same period last year.
However, ongoing fighting in neighboring Sudan and the increasing number of civilians crossing into into South Sudan have exacerbated the security and humanitarian situation in the country.
Subnational violence within South Sudan continues to kill and injure civilians, impede humanitarian access throughout the country, and force people to flee from their homes. In addition to climate-related disasters, armed conflict and communal clashes are the main causes of displacement. Armed violence and deteriorating security conditions exacerbate food insecurity and malnutrition rates, particularly among children under five and pregnant and lactating women.
In addition, South Sudan’s women and girls remain at high risk of gender-based violence (GBV).
Donations
Your donation for the South Sudan emergency can help United Nations agencies, international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their local partners to rapidly provide water, food, medicine, shelter and other aid to the people who need it most.
- UN Crisis Relief: South Sudan Crisis
https://crisisrelief.un.org/south-sudan-crisis - World Food Programme: South Sudan emergency
https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/south-sudan-emergency - UNHCR: South Sudan emergency
https://www.unhcr.org/south-sudan-emergency.html - Oxfam International: Hunger crisis in South Sudan
https://www.oxfam.org/en/what-we-do/emergencies/hunger-crisis-south-sudan - International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC): South Sudan
https://www.icrc.org/en/where-we-work/africa/south-sudan
To find other organizations to which you can donate, visit: Humanitarian Crisis Relief, Refugees and IDPs, Children in Need, Hunger and Food Insecurity, Medical Humanitarian Aid, Vulnerable Groups, Faith-Based Humanitarian Organizations, and Human Rights Organizations.
Further information
- UN OCHA: South Sudan
https://www.unocha.org/south-sudan - ACAPS: South Sudan
https://www.acaps.org/country/south-sudan/crisis/complex-crisis - Concern Worldwide: The South Sudan crisis explained
https://www.concernusa.org/story/south-sudan-crisis-explained/ - European Commission: European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations: South Sudan
https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/where/africa/south-sudan_en - Global Conflict Tracker: Civil War in South Sudan
https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-south-sudan - International Crisis Group (ICG): South Sudan
https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan - United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS)
https://unmiss.unmissions.org/ - Human Rights Watch: World Report 2024: South Sudan
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/south-sudan - Amnesty International: Report 2023/2024: Human rights in South Sudan
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/africa/east-africa-the-horn-and-great-lakes/south-sudan/report-south-sudan/
Last updated: 28/11/2024