Famine-hit South Sudanese eat weeds and water lilies to survive

[inanna]

Source: Reuters

Sun Feb 26, 2017 | 1:57pm EST

Like thousands of other South Sudanese families caught up in famine, Sara Dit and her 10 children are hiding from marauding gunmen in the swamps and islands of the river Nile.

The refuge has a steep price: families cannot farm crops or earn money to buy food. They eat water lily roots and the occasional fish. Dit's family have not eaten for days.

Last week the United Nations declared that parts of South Sudan are experiencing famine, the first time the world has faced such a catastrophe in six years. Some 5.5 million people, nearly half the population, will not have a reliable source of food by July.

The disaster is largely man-made. Oil-rich South Sudan, the world's youngest nation, plunged into civil war in 2013, after President Salva Kiir fired his deputy Riek Machar. Since then, fighting has fractured the country along ethnic lines, inflation topped 800 percent last year and war and drought have paralyzed agriculture.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southsudan-famine-idUSKBN1650SR?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews

[democrank]

1. I can not imagine being a woman like Nyaluat or Dit in such a horrific situation.

Their hearts must break for their children. A man-made catastrophe, a life-ending disaster. This is the first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning.

[yeoman6987]

3. Hopefully the UN is on it

I remeber the last drought in Africa. The United States had hand across America in the 80's. Maybe another telethon like that will help again. We came through in the 80's, I'm sure we could now.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. This is uncalled for.

Notice the Key,Oil.

[Hortensis]

4. Exxon once again negotiating to purchase S Sudan oil

rights, along with other oil companies. Exxon withdrew in 2014 because of the civil warring, but now S Sudan is apparently sufficiently "stabilized" between 2 warring kleptocratic governing groups to move forward with extracting and exporting the nation's major commodity. Those who have taken control, such as it is, in S Sudan have already been collecting and transferring vast amounts of S Sudan's wealth out of the country and are eager to get their hands on its oil wealth.

S Sudan had once separated from vicious, corrupt, and aggressively religiously oppressive Sudan with high hopes of creating a prosperous democratic republic with its oil wealth, not 5 million people facing starvation while Exxon helped developed a new class of S Sudanese billionaires.

What will SoS Rex Tillerson do?