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Aid groups have warned that South Sudan, one of the youngest nations of the world, is on a verge of another famine after extreme hunger gripped the northern part of the country in 2017.
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Per the rights groups, the civil war-torn east African nation is once again facing extreme hunger. "These are unprecedented levels of food insecurity," Ross Smith, senior program officer for the U.N's World Food Program, told the Associated Press.
Members of a working group including South Sudanese and U.N. officials who have declared 2018 as "toughest year on record," said nearly two-thirds of the population will need food aid to avoid starvation and malnutrition, according to Reuters.
“The situation is extremely fragile, and we are close to seeing another famine. The projections are stark. If we ignore them, we’ll be faced with a growing tragedy," Serge Tissot, from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in South Sudan, told Reuters.
Nearly 5.3 million people which make up for 48 percent of the population are in a "crisis" situation. On a five-point scale, it ranks as high as stages three and four, per a survey published by the working group.
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