JUBA, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Humanitarian agencies on Wednesday called on warring parties in South Sudan to cease hostilities and grant more access in a bid to avert looming hunger in the lean season.
Jan Egeland, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Secretary General, told journalists in Juba that more resources and increased humanitarian access are needed to avert looming food catastrophe in the country.
"I very much would hope that the government can now take the initiative of declaring a humanitarian truce...it will be catastrophic unless there is a Cessation of Hostilities (COH) that is holding and the present one is not holding," Egeland said after visiting the worst affected areas of Mayom, Leer in the northern Unity region.
This year's Famine Early Warning Systems Network disclosed that 7.1 million South Sudanese risk starvation due to the fact that 4.5 million have been displaced from their homes since outbreak of conflict in December 2013.
Despite the government and rebels agreeing to the COH in December 2017, intermittent fighting continues across the country amid harassment, aid restrictions and killing of humanitarian workers.
He said South Sudan is a potential bread basket of the region but conflict has forced the majority of farmers to flee for safety into refugee camps.
Egeland urged international donors not to lower investments in relief services but to scale up humanitarian funding.
Adnan Khan, the UN World Food Program (WFP) Country Director, said the humanitarian situation in the country continues to deteriorate.
"The humanitarian situation in South Sudan continues to deteriorate and an unprecedented seven million people wait upon humanitarian assistance in 2018. This is first and foremost a protection crisis in which civilians continue to be killed and subjected to multiple displacements and violations including sexual violence," he said.
South Sudan descended into civil war in late 2013, and the conflict has created one of the fastest growing refugee crises in the world.
The UN estimates that about 4 million South Sudanese have been displaced internally and externally.
