South Sudan’s Hunger Trap Deepens as Aid Shrinks and Food Routes Falter

More than one million vulnerable people in South Sudan could lose food and nutrition assistance by October, WFP warns. Shrinking aid budgets, disrupted trade and flooded farmland are deepening hunger while leaving families with fewer alternatives to humanitarian support.

South Sudan faces the possible loss of food and nutrition assistance for more than one million vulnerable people by October, just as conflict, displacement and disrupted supplies leave families with fewer ways to survive. The World Food Programme's warning points to an emergency in which shrinking relief budgets are compounding the breakdown of markets, farming and community support.

Matthew Hollingworth, WFP's Assistant Executive Director for Programme Operations, described a sharp deterioration after a week-long visit to the country. His account connects nearly empty humanitarian warehouses with traders retreating from costly transport routes and families unable to cultivate submerged land. Together, these pressures suggest that replacing lost assistance through local livelihoods or commercial food purchases is becoming increasingly difficult.

WFP's key figures illustrate the scale of the pressure:

• 7.8 million people, more than half the population, struggle to find food each day.
• 2.2 million children and 1.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding mothers require urgent nutrition support.
• More than one million vulnerable people could lose food and nutrition assistance by October without additional resources.
• Around 3,000 refugees and returnees arrive from neighbouring Sudan each week.
• An immediate $86 million funding gap and a $416 million gap over six months threaten WFP's ability to sustain its response.

Empty Warehouses Reveal a Shrinking Capacity to Respond

In Malakal, Hollingworth found less than 300 metric tons of food at a logistics complex where WFP had positioned 10,000 metric tons at the same point a year earlier. The hub had supported life-saving deliveries to half a million people across the greater Upper Nile region. He attributed the depleted stocks to reduced resources, while stressing that humanitarian needs had not fallen.

The comparison reveals more than a decline in inventory. Food stored near vulnerable communities gives humanitarian agencies the ability to move supplies when access improves. Hollingworth said the previous year's stocks had been ready for distribution as the rainy season withdrew. With far less food positioned, an opening in transport routes may no longer translate into a delivery on the scale required.

Funding therefore affects both the volume of assistance and agencies' readiness to respond. A depleted warehouse leaves less room to accommodate new arrivals, worsening hunger or a brief opportunity to reach an isolated community. The October warning puts a deadline on that pressure: unless resources arrive, people already identified as vulnerable could lose support while the conditions driving their needs persist.

Checkpoints Squeeze Both Relief and the Food Trade

Money is only one constraint. Hollingworth said soldiers impose illegal checkpoints and taxation on humanitarian and commercial traffic along the Nile, raising costs and slowing deliveries. Some traders, he said, have become unwilling to continue operating under those conditions. The resulting disruption affects two channels through which families obtain food: humanitarian distributions and the markets where they spend their own money or cash assistance.

His description of Malakal illustrated the extent of the disruption. Apart from locally grown tomatoes, okra, chilies and onions, he said food consumed there was arriving by air because road and barge transport had become too expensive. In his account, repeated illegal charges had made those journeys unattractive to transporters, limiting the flow of commercial supplies as well as complicating aid operations.

Such conditions weaken the usefulness of cash assistance. Cash can help a household purchase food, but its effectiveness depends on goods reaching local markets. When transporters withdraw and supplies diminish, a transfer cannot resolve the underlying shortage. Humanitarian agencies consequently face a linked problem: sustaining families' purchasing power while securing the physical movement of the food those families need to buy.

The same transport barriers also reduce what additional donor funding can achieve. Higher delivery costs absorb resources that could otherwise support assistance, while delays complicate distribution. Improving access would therefore benefit both relief operations and ordinary trade. Restoring supplies through one channel alone would leave households exposed to weaknesses in the other, particularly where families depend on a combination of aid and market purchases.

Displacement Pushes Scarcity Beyond the Newly Arrived

The conflict in neighbouring Sudan continues to bring refugees and South Sudanese returnees into communities already struggling to feed themselves. Hollingworth said around 3,000 people cross the border each week seeking safety, food, water and shelter. Their arrival adds needs that extend beyond reception centres: when formal assistance falls short, neighbours, relatives and host communities become another source of support.

Reduced assistance can spread pressure beyond the people directly affected by cuts. Host communities already facing food shortages must stretch their resources further when displaced families turn to them for help. Sustaining support for refugees and returnees therefore also helps limit the additional burden on residents whose own food supplies and livelihoods are under strain.

The pressure also has a protection dimension. Hollingworth warned that women and girls face risks while seeking food, work and basic necessities. When assistance fails to meet household needs, families may face increasingly difficult choices about how to secure them. Food and nutrition support consequently has implications for personal safety as well as hunger, particularly among displaced communities.

Lost Farmland Raises the Stakes for Government Action

In Canal Pigi in Jonglei State, Hollingworth described families whose farmland remained submerged seven years after the original floods. Insufficient rainfall was also threatening small harvests on land still available for cultivation. Persistent floodwater and a lack of fresh rain create distinct pressures: one prevents access to fields, while the other undermines production on the limited ground that remains usable.

These conditions narrow the prospects for replacing humanitarian assistance with home-grown food. Families cannot simply return to farming when the land they depended on remains underwater, and smaller harvests offer an uncertain fallback. Reduced relief therefore reaches beyond an immediate consumption gap. It affects people whose means of recovering a more independent food supply have also been weakened.

Hollingworth called on South Sudan's government to mobilise domestic resources, including money or food from areas still able to produce it, and to address illegal taxation on transport routes. "The humanitarian community cannot replace the obligations that the government has for their own citizens," he said. His appeal puts domestic support and the movement of goods alongside donor funding as central tests of the response.