HUMANITARIAN agencies are “incredibly concerned” about the plight of children in South Sudan who have been forced to flee repeatedly in the face of growing violence and with little humanitarian aid available to support them.
Figures released by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reveal that South Sudan is already one of the countries with the most deaths of under-fives.
A spokesperson for World Vision said that it was deeply concerned for “millions of children” as they struggled to survive in the midst of a “polycrisis” of conflict, climate shocks, poverty, and persistent displacement.
The children were already “living on the edge” after years of violence, and the worsening conflict was deepening their suffering, the charity’s country director, Dr Mesfin Loha, said.
“As tensions escalate in Jonglei and other parts of the country, the humanitarian situation is becoming increasingly fragile. As we have repeatedly mentioned, children are bearing the brunt of this crisis. At such a young age, many are experiencing repeated displacement, loss, hunger, and fear — conditions which are extremely harmful to their survival, protection, and long-term well-being.”
The charity is not able to operate in areas where some of the most recent deadly clashes have occurred, such as Jonglai, where there has been a huge military offensive by government forces against loyalists of the country’s former vice-president, but it is providing humanitarian support to children displaced from conflict areas.
Fighting in South Sudan first broke out between the forces of President Salva Kiir and his deputy in 2013. Although a peace deal was signed in 2018, this has not been properly implemented. It is feared that the country is again on the brink of civil war.
Ten million of the population, estimated at 12.4 million, are in need of food aid, the World Food Programme says, but the aid available is shrinking as donor countries, led by the United States and the UK, reduce development funding.
A new UN report on child mortality, which fully assesses for the first time all the leading causes for deaths of under-fives, found that progress in reducing child deaths had slowed by more than 60 per cent in the past ten years, although deaths of under-fives overall had still fallen by more than half since the turn of the century.
The report estimates, for the first time, deaths caused by severe acute malnutrition, finding that five per cent of under-fives, about 100,000 children, died from it in 2024. In all, 4.9 million under-fives, including 2.3 million newborns, have died.
The main killers of young children are treatable infectious diseases, such as malaria, diarrhoea, and pneumonia.
In South Sudan in 2024, 97 children in 1000 died before they were five: one of the highest child-mortality rates in the world, beaten only by Chad, Niger, and Nigeria.
Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 58 per cent of all deaths of under-fives.
“No child should die from diseases that we know how to prevent. But we see worrying signs that progress in child survival is slowing — and at a time when we’re seeing further global budget cuts,” the executive director of UNICEF, Catherine Russell, said.
