Half S.Sudan in acute hunger while at aid at lowest ever

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NAIROBI - Nearly half the population in South Sudan, the world's youngest country, faces acute hunger and has never received so little aid, Oxfam said Wednesday.

The UK-based charity said only 40 percent of South Sudan's $1.6 billion humanitarian plan for 2025 had been received as Western nations slash aid budgets.

Nearly six million South Sudanese are suffering acute hunger and have little access to clean water and sanitation, Oxfam said, and this was expected to reach 7.5 million by April.

Massive corruption by elites stealing South Sudan's oil wealth, documented by the United Nations, has left the country with almost no basic services.

"It is as though the world is turning its back on those who need help the most, at the very moment when their survival hangs in the balance," said Shabnam Baloch, Oxfam's South Sudan country director, in a statement.

South Sudan gained independence in 2011 but soon after suffered five years of devastating civil war, leaving more than two million displaced, and there are fears of renewed conflict this year as a peace agreement unravels.

It is also hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war in neighbouring Sudan.

Up to 1,000 people a day arrive daily at transit centres in the border town of Renk but Oxfam is being forced to scale down operations there by 70 per cent over the next month, and said it would halt work entirely without new funding secured by February.