New fighting in South Sudan threatens widespread starvation

June 20, 2014

The newly independent republic of South Sudan is caught up in its own civil war, which threatens to cause widespread starvation, warns the apostolic nuncio serving there.

Archbishop Charles Daniel Balvo, who doubles as the Vatican’s representative in Kenya and in South Sudan, says that the current fighting in the impoverished country is “a struggle for political power which now has tribal overtones.”

After the country won its independence from Sudan in 2011, after a long and bloody civil war, “no longer having a common enemy they started fighting with each other,” the apostolic nuncio lamented. If the fighting is not curbed in time for farmers to plant their crops, he said, starvation will loom in six months.

 

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Further information:

• Apostolic Nuncio to Sudan: 'In six months, there will be violence and starvation' (Rome Reports)