South Sudan close to humanitarian catastrophe: UN
Iran Press TV
Wed Aug 6, 2014 9:16PM GMT
South Sudan is on the verge of a 'humanitarian catastrophe' due to unrelenting violence in the African country, a high-ranking UN official says.
'After three years of independence, South Sudan is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe and a protracted internal conflict,' Edmond Mulet, the UN assistant secretary general for peacekeeping operations, told the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
"This is a man-made crisis, and those responsible for it have been slow in resolving it."
Mulet also warned that over one million people have been displaced due to the ongoing clashes in the country, adding that the people are at the risk of hunger and dangerous diseases.
Some four million South Sudanese may be unable to get enough food amid 'growing concerns of a famine,' he added.
South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy Riek Machar around the capital Juba.
The conflict soon turned into an all-out war between the army and defectors, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer ethnic group.
The clashes left thousands of South Sudanese dead and forced around 1.5 million people to flee their homes in the world's youngest nation.
The country's warring sides continued peace talks in Ethiopia on Monday, but they have yet to achieve any breakthroughs.
South Sudan gained independence in July 2011 after its people overwhelmingly voted in a referendum for a split from the North.
MSM/MAM/MHB
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