WFP - Press Briefing: AED Hollingworth's mission to South Sudan

Good morning. Welcome to the press briefing of the UN Information Service in Geneva. Today is Tuesday, 15 September. I hope you had a long, good weekend. And I'm very happy to start this week with a prequel to our briefing. with Matthew Hollingworth, who is Assistant Executive Director for Program Operations of the World Food Program. We welcome you, Matthew, here for let's start with a briefing on your mission to South Sudan. And after your introductory remarks, we'll take a few questions. So thank you very much to you and to Shannon for being here. And I give you the floor for your remarks. Thanks.

Thank you very much. Good morning to you all. So I am here today to give a briefing on what we are seeing as a fairly catastrophic situation unfolding across South Sudan. Simply put, South Sudan today is facing a sort of a collision of crises, plural, just as the humanitarian resources are starting to run out. I was the country director for the World Food Programme in South Sudan for three years. I left in 2022. And since my departure until the one-week mission I took part in last week, the situation has deteriorated enormously. Across the whole country, conflict, displacement, economic hardship, climate shocks. and the situation in neighboring Sudan are all converging to push millions of people deeper into vulnerability. At the same time, as I say, we're seeing not just the World Food Programme's humanitarian assistance, but all actors' humanitarian assistance in the country rapidly declining in scale. 7.8 million people today, more than half the country's population, struggle to find food each day. 2.2 million children and 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding mothers require urgent nutrition support. Unless additional resources are secured, more than a million vulnerable people could lose access to lifesaving food and nutrition assistance by October. So this is looming. South Sudan is also bearing, as I mentioned, the consequences of conflict in neighboring Sudan. Each week, 3,000 refugees and Sudanese who were formerly refugees in Sudan, South Sudanese formerly refugees in Sudan, are crossing the border, looking for safety, looking for food, looking for water, looking for shelter. During my visit last week in Renk, I met women and children and older people who traveled for days on foot, sometimes weeks, escaping violence and uncertainty in order to get to South Sudan, you know, genuinely out of the frying pan into the fire. Many have lost their homes. Most, if not all, have lost their livelihoods and belongings. Sadly, many have lost loved ones. And yet they are arriving, as I say, into communities that are already struggling significantly to feed themselves and look after themselves. One of the women I met, a lady by the name of Hapsa Hassan, a mother of four, who had recently arrived in Renk in the transit camp, fled Blue Nile State, Damazin, and having walked almost 200 kilometers, she reached the transit camp absolutely exhausted. extremely hungry, as were her children, and genuinely uncertain as to what lay ahead of her. She did receive food assistance from WFP. She received nutrition support from UNICEF for her children. But frankly, it just wasn't and isn't enough to meet her needs. And now, sadly, she's going to rely on the generosity of neighbors and friends and host communities to support her families and other communities that don't have enough themselves, facing similar kinds of hardships and increasing pressure because of the new arrivals into those transit centers and, indeed, ultimately, refugee camps. She spoke of impossible choices that women and girls are being forced to take each day to look for food and basic necessities. Her biggest concern that she raised with me was the safety of her teenage daughter, who she knows is going to need to leave the transit camp on a daily basis to look for work, to look for food, and to take risks that no young girl should be taking and should ever have to face. Perhaps the story For me, at least, was a really stark reminder of the protection risks and the vulnerabilities confronting displaced families as they struggle to survive. Over the last three years, the World Food Programme and partners have indeed provided food and cash and nutrition assistance to refugees and an increasing number of South Sudanese returnees going into already vulnerable communities. The assistance has been a lifeline. Today, it is at risk. I was in Malakal as well during my visit, visiting one of what was the largest logistics hub that we had in the northern part of South Sudan, where we would feed half a million people across the greater Upper Nile region with lifesaving support. Last year in Malakal, at this time, we had 10,000 tons of food positioned, ready to go the moment the rainy season withdrew, so that we could get food out to areas as they became accessible, as we identified vulnerability. Today, there's less than 300 tons of food in that same complex, not because The numbers have fallen, not because there's less need, not because things have improved, but because, simply put, humanitarian agencies just don't have the resources anymore that they once had had. Access and safety, or lack thereof, is compounding this crisis. Humanitarian food that gets transported along the Nile Commercial food and other materials that get transported along the River Nile face illegal checkpoints and illegal taxation by soldiers across the entirety of the journeys that they take. This increases operational costs, it slows down the delivery of assistance, and for many traders, it's become so much that it's prohibiting their ability and desire to continue trading. This is at a time when every single pound, every single euro, every single dollar really matters. And these illegal checkpoints reduce our ability to stretch scarce humanitarian resources. It reduces our ability to move assistance efficiently. And when we're relying on cash as one of the modalities of support, it means that the availability of commercial goods is diminishing daily. Honestly speaking, today in Malakal, if a family is eating something other than tomatoes, okra, chilies, and onions that are grown locally, anything else they are eating has been flown into Malakal, because it simply does not longer arrive by road or by barge, because it's too expensive, because materials have to pay so much, or the transporters have to pay so many illegal taxes on the way. They're just not taking the risk anymore. This is starting not just to raise costs, it's starting to be a cost in terms of people's lives. Even where humanitarian assistance does reach communities, the pressure that's facing those communities is mounting. I went to Canal Pigi in Jonglei State, and I met families whose farmland, seven years after the original floods, are still submerged. Communities that could, in the old days, produce their own food, can no longer produce any food, and they can't rely on the small harvests in the land that is not submerged because of rather contradictory, a drought which is growing in the area. So surrounded by flood water, at the same time facing droughts in terms of a lack of rain. Flood water, by the way, that after seven years of submerging is no longer clean, is no longer drinkable, is no longer safe. These extreme weather shocks and the impact of what is a super El Nino is having a greater impact in South Sudan, but also in neighboring Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya. It's going to have a bigger effect on food security in the entire area. The reduced funding now is exacerbating all these other risks, all these other challenges, leaving fewer families with food assistance, fewer children with access to nutrition support, and fewer opportunities for communities to recover from repeated shocks. We are committed to keep doing all that we can, but we do need resources urgently to save lives. The World Food Program and other partners, other UN organizations as well. If you just look at WFP, we have an $86 million gap over the next, sorry, right now, and a $416 million gap over the next six months. Without that, we can't serve the refugees. We can't serve the displaced. We can't serve the vulnerable host communities during these six months. And we can't serve those people that are living in fear of famine in at least four locations of Jonglei State. We do, however, also have a significant call to action for the government of South Sudan. The burden cannot only sit with humanitarian and development workers. The government of South Sudan has to start mobilizing their own funds to support their own people. The humanitarian community cannot replace the obligations that the government has for their own citizens. They need to take action as well to put their own finances, their own resources, and their own resources may mean money, but it could mean food that is grown in other areas of the country that still has the ability. They also need to take action to make sure if those goods move commercially or as aid around the country, that they are not diminished in their impact because of the illegal taxation and daylight robbery, which is frankly growing and has grown so much over the last five years. I'm happy to take more questions. I have to emphasize that while South Sudan is a country that has faced many challenges in its short life as an independent nation, we are seeing something different now. We are about to drop off a financial cliff at a time when the needs are at the greatest level that they've been at for the past 13, 14 years. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Matthew, for this compelling and really important briefing. I'll open now the floor to questions in the room. First, let me see, so let's start with Emma, is from our correspondent from Reuters, Emma Farge.

Hi, good morning. Thank you very much for that briefing. It sounds like a catastrophic situation already, you used the word yourself. How do you think El Nino will play out in that setting? Have you gamed that out yet? And have you started making preparations? Thank you.

Thank you, Emma, for the question. There's no question you're seeing the impact immediately today of the super El Nino in South Sudan. It is the areas of the country that should be particularly fertile are impacted. So, places like Western Equatoria and Upper Nile State. But when you're looking at places like Eastern Equatoria, that used to be an area that we never were concerned about in terms of food security three years ago, two years ago, five years ago, they are of serious concern today. So, you're seeing growing numbers of need in areas where there was relative where there is relative accessibility, but unfortunately, because of the dryness, the crops are failing or simply the yields are so much lower than they used to be. But it's the regional impact that is going to be a much bigger concern. Northern Uganda, parts of Kenya, as I said, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan itself, all countries that South Sudan relied upon to bring trade into the country so that people could buy affordable food and other affordable items. That's all changing because of this situation. And of course, in the greater region of the Horn, we're going to see the contradictory impact as well of floods in Somalia and beyond in the future. But already in South Sudan, this is making a difference, and it's going to get much worse over the next 18 to 24 months because the tail of this super linear impact is going to la- is going to be a long one.

Absolutely. Alexandre Grobois, AFP.

Yes, thank you for this briefing. Uh, regarding the WFP activities in South Sudan, can you tell us how many people you are assisting right now? Uh, what's your current budget for the country, and, uh, how much funding do you need to avert, uh, this disaster you're talking about of million people, uh, who would be left without food aid?

So, uh, right now, we are still supporting almost 3 million people, as I said, 7.8 million people is the number, uh, of, uh, acutely food insecure, who we sh- we would normally, in better years, wish to support, so already less than half that number, if we don't have a very significant uptick in resources very soon, the number I gave you was $86 million immediately, by the end of this month, going into next month, that 3 million will drop to 1 million. And you're talking about children in school receiving school meals. You're talking about refugees crossing the border, receiving an emergency 15-day ration. You're talking about returnees and refugees and IDPs that receive, in all cases, a diminished ration to meet their needs because we simply don't have the resources that we used to have. Over the next six months, if we are to put pipelines in place and have markets or support markets to start re-functioning in places where they've stopped working, try and support retailers to come back into areas, we would need in excess of $400 million. It's a huge number, but it's a big country with a very large population. As I said, some of that can come, I'm sorry to interrupt, some of that should come from government's resources as well. And we are absolutely open to work with the government of South Sudan to find a way to utilize their own resources so that we can supplement and augment. What we are telling you today is we cannot act in lieu of the government. We cannot replace them. The needs are too great, and they are immediate.

Thank you very much. We still have a few minutes with Matthew. Any other question I may see on the platform? or online. I don't see hands up. So if there is no other question I'm not seeing any hand up so I'd like to thank you immensely for this important briefing. I'm always very grateful when people come by Geneva and stop to brief the journalists, and I really wish you all the best for this incredibly difficult situation. Thank you so much, Matthew, and thanks, Shannon.