South Sudan Aid Crisis Deepens as Food Stocks and Funding Decline

South Sudan is facing a worsening humanitarian crisis as dwindling funding and falling food stocks threaten assistance for refugees, returnees, displaced people and vulnerable host communities.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says more than one million vulnerable people could lose life-saving food and nutrition assistance by October unless additional resources are secured. The warning comes as about 3,000 refugees and returnees cross into South Sudan from Sudan each week.

More than 1.4 million refugees and returnees have entered South Sudan since the war in Sudan began in 2023, according to WFP. The arrivals have placed additional pressure on a country already affected by conflict, displacement, hunger, drought and flooding.

Food stocks fall in Malakal

WFP said food stocks in Malakal, in Upper Nile state, had dropped from 10,000 metric tonnes at the same time last year to less than 300 tonnes. The agency has reduced rations and cut support as funding has declined.

The former Protection of Civilians site in Malakal, now designated as an internally displaced people’s settlement, houses nearly 40,000 displaced people across more than 6,000 households. The International Organization for Migration has warned that water, sanitation and hygiene services in Malakal and Bentiu are also at risk because of funding shortfalls.

IOM said Malakal faces increased flood risk during the rainy season without drainage pumping and dyke maintenance.

New arrivals face pressure in Renk

Renk, near South Sudan’s border with Sudan, has become a major entry point for people fleeing the war. Its transit centres were not built for the current scale of arrivals, and some families remain there for months while waiting for onward transport to Malakal or other parts of the country.

Zainab Musa, a mother of six who recently arrived from Sudan, described conditions at a transit centre as marked by hunger. “The humanitarian situation is hard and there is nothing to eat, just hunger,” she said.

Najah al-Tayieb al-Fadhul, a Sudanese refugee and mother of four, said her husband was killed by Sudanese armed forces before she left the country. She said children at the transit centre were experiencing hunger, sickness and malnutrition, and that one of her children had heart disease that she could not afford to treat.

Another refugee, Nura Mohammed Ahmed, said hunger and a lack of nutrition had caused deaths at the site. She said some people faced the choice of returning to war-torn Sudan or remaining in South Sudan without enough food.

Funding gaps threaten wider response

WFP says it faces an immediate funding gap of $86 million and a shortfall of $416 million over the next six months. Its current South Sudan emergency response lists a $258 million funding shortfall for the remainder of 2026.

The agency says 7.8 million people in South Sudan face high levels of acute food shortage, while 2.2 million children are acutely malnourished. In August, WFP and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees warned that more than 650,000 refugees and asylum seekers were at risk of losing food assistance. Support for the most vulnerable 240,000 refugees was expected to run out in September without additional funding.

WFP Assistant Executive Director Matthew Hollingworth visited Renk, Malakal and Pigi county, where he witnessed pressures linked to conflict, displacement, hunger and climate shocks.

Hollingworth said the war in Sudan had pushed up prices in South Sudan and added pressure through the arrival of refugees. He also said illegal checkpoints were preventing humanitarian workers from reaching vulnerable people across the country.

“It all comes at the time when the international community has a lot less to give, and we don’t have the same resources we used to have,” Hollingworth said.