Finn Church Aid has been able to start distributing food in South Sudan’s Western Equatorian state in Mundri province. Food is being distributed for three months for approximately 12 000 internally displaced persons.

South Sudan is currently battling with world’s worst food crisis. The violence that erupted again in last December has driven over million and a half people from their homes. Farming has become impossible in many areas, and three million South Sudanese are in the need of acute food assistance. The only way to help is to distribute food to the people right now.

FCA has started distributing basic foodstuffs – corn flour, beans, cooking oil, salt and sugar – last week in Amandi, Mundri province, in Western Equatoria. A humanitarian assistance group of seven people were present. Heavy rains have delayed the start of the distributions, and made a large part of the country inaccessible.

”The food assistance is being driven by truck as close to the settlements and then with small pick-up trucks to the refugees. Internally displaced refugees have settled among the local population. There is more and more of them coming. Due to the wishes of local authorities, the distribution started in Amadi.  The situation is alarming”, says Kalim Ul Masih, FCA’s Country Representative of South Sudan in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

“South Sudan is completely reliant on external help. The food situation is extremely alarming, because the political conflict and violence still continues in the country. Increasingly more people have to leave their home region and therefore lose their livelihood”, Ul Masih continues.

FCA’s food assistance is being distributed in Mundri state to IDPs living in different destinations. Food is being distributed to approximately 12 000 people and the goal is that they’d receive two meals per day.

The food assistance is being funded by The Primate’s World Relief and Canadian Foodgrains Bank.

For more information:
Kalim Ul Masih, Country Representative of South Sudan, kalim.ulmasih@kirkonulkomaanapu.fi (due to bad phone connections, please make inquiries via e-mail, you can write also in Finnish)
or Hilkka Hyrkkö, Communications Specialist, East and Southern Africa, tel. +254 716 223 780 tai +358 40 631 3493