{"id":98091,"date":"2026-09-15T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=98091"},"modified":"2026-09-15T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T12:00:00","slug":"super-el-nino-deepens-hunger-crisis-in-south-sudan-wfp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=98091","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Super El Ni\u00f1o\u2019 deepens hunger crisis in South Sudan \u2013 WFP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<br \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<h3>Key points<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>7.8 million South Sudanese face high levels of acute food insecurity.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>El Ni\u00f1o is already threatening farming output.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Sudan\u2019s war is driving more refugees and returnees into South Sudan.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Funding shortages and access constraints threaten life-saving food assistance.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cConflict, displacement, economic hardship, climate shocks, and the situation in neighbouring Sudan are all converging to push millions of people deeper into vulnerability\u201d just as humanitarian resources are starting to run out, said Matthew Hollingworth,\u00a0WFP Assistant Executive\u00a0Director\u00a0for\u00a0Programme\u00a0Operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Some 7.8 million people, or more than half of the country&#8217;s population, struggle to find enough food each day, while 2.2 million children and 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding mothers require urgent nutrition support, he told reporters in Geneva.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>October deadline<\/h2>\n<p><strong>A further million vulnerable people could lose access to life-saving food and nutrition assistance by October <\/strong>without additional resources.<\/p>\n<p>After returning from a visit to the country last week, Mr. Hollingworth insisted that the impact of the \u201csuper El Ni\u00f1o\u201d is already immediately clear in South Sudan; even the most fertile agricultural areas have been affected, with crops failing and low yields due to drought.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond South Sudan itself, the regional impact of extreme weather is also being felt in neighbouring Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya, causing a \u201cbigger effect on food security in the entire area\u201d, the WFP official warned.<\/p>\n<p>El Ni\u00f1o is a naturally occurring climate pattern that typically occurs every two to seven years, when waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific become unusually warm, with impacts on rainfall and temperature patterns thousands of miles away. This year, El Ni\u00f1o is developing as the oceans are already exceptionally warm. Earlier this month UN chief Ant\u00f3nio Guterres said that the phenomenon is \u201cbeing supersized before our eyes\u201d.<\/p>\n<h2>War in Sudan\u00a0<\/h2>\n<p>Over the border in Sudan, the proximity of what UN humanitarians have called the world\u2019s worst hunger and displacement crisis is\u00a0making the dire situation even worse.<\/p>\n<p>Each week, the country sees the influx of 3,000 refugees and South Sudanese who were formerly refugees in Sudan, \u201clooking for safety, looking for food, looking for water, looking for shelter\u201d, Mr. Hollingworth said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The WFP official spoke of meeting women, children and older people in Renk, Upper Nile State, South Sudan, last week, who had \u201ctravelled for days, sometimes weeks on foot\u201d to escape fighting between Government and opposition forces, arriving exhausted and hungry \u201cinto communities that are already struggling significantly to feed themselves and look after themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Access challenges continue to compound the crisis. Aid and commercial food transported along the River Nile \u201cface illegal checkpoints and illegal taxation by soldiers across the entirety of the journeys that they take,\u201d increasing operational costs and slowing down the delivery of assistance.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>Illegal levies<\/h2>\n<p>In Upper Nile State\u2019s capital Malakal, Mr. Hollingworth noted, \u201cif 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\u201d as it is too expensive to bring it in by road or by barge, including because of the illegal taxes that have to be paid along the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is starting not just to raise costs, it&#8217;s starting to be a cost in terms of people&#8217;s lives,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/feed\/view\/en\/story\/2026\/09\/1168334\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Key points 7.8 million South Sudanese face high levels of acute food insecurity. El Ni\u00f1o is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[481,1840,1705,2099,255,1028,1220,3542],"class_list":["post-98091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","tag-crisis","tag-deepens","tag-hunger","tag-nino","tag-south","tag-sudan","tag-super","tag-wfp"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>\u2018Super El Ni\u00f1o\u2019 deepens hunger crisis in South Sudan \u2013 WFP - Gulf Times | News by the minute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gulf Times: Latest news across the GCC from UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/feed\/view\/en\/story\/2026\/09\/1168334\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Super El Ni\u00f1o\u2019 deepens hunger crisis in South Sudan \u2013 WFP\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gulf News| UAE&#039;s Largest News aggregator site\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/feed\/view\/en\/story\/2026\/09\/1168334\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gulf Times | News by the minute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/100084981843786\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-15T12:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789478103_image560x340cropped.avif\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"340\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\u2018Super El Ni\u00f1o\u2019 deepens hunger crisis in South Sudan \u2013 WFP - 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