The situation
Every figure on this page carries the year it was measured. Where a number is an estimate, it says so. Nothing here has been updated since 2021.
Needed humanitarian aid
In 2021: 8 million nationals and 310,000 refugees and asylum seekers — an increase of 800,000 on the 7.5 million recorded in 2020.
Facing crisis-level food insecurity
About half the population, on 2021 estimates. The increase in need was driven largely by rising food insecurity.
Children under five
Expected to be acutely malnourished during 2021.
Displaced from home
Nearly 1.6 million displaced internally and some 2.2 million as refugees in six neighbouring countries. Women and children are the most affected.
Living in poverty
At the 1.90 US dollar a day line, 2011 purchasing power parity — the most recent estimate available.
Real GDP growth, FY2019/20
Oil-led, and not a measure of how people lived: living standards fell over the same period.
Conflict and recovery
The truce signed in September 2018 and the unity government formed in February 2020 gave real hope of recovery and peace building.
Conflict events decreased significantly in 2019, allowing some refugees previously dispersed in the region to return, and a resumption of oil production in fields shut down by the fighting raised hopes of an oil-led recovery.
Those gains are at risk. Inter-clan violence increased through 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic compounded an already dire situation. In that year communities were hit by a triple shock: intensified conflict and inter-tribal violence, a second consecutive year of major flooding, and the pandemic.
Insecurity, the lack of basic services and unresolved housing, land and property questions have kept people from returning home in large numbers.
The economy
The South Sudan economy is especially vulnerable to weather, oil price and conflict-related shocks.
Growth had picked up strongly before the pandemic, with real GDP growth reaching 9.5% in FY2019/20. Oil remained the primary driver, with estimated production of 62.1 million barrels in FY2019/20 against 49.1 million the year before — a rise of 26.5%. Cultivated area grew 6% in 2020, though it is still far below pre-conflict levels.
Living standards moved the other way. Surveys in June 2020 found 51.2% of respondents reporting reduced earnings from their main income source; by October 2020 that had eased only to 50.7%. Expenditure on health, education, water and sanitation, and agriculture and rural development remains limited, so poverty is expected to stay extremely high.
Why this page is here
Half a country at crisis-level food insecurity is the reason the diocese provides a meal alongside every lesson.
These figures are not background. They are the working conditions of every department the Catholic Diocese of Rumbek runs. They are why the Education department feeds 50,000 children as well as teaching them, why the Health department keeps a hospital running 75 kilometres from the nearest town, why Good News Radio broadcasts in five languages to people who cannot travel, and why the Women Desk trains women in agriculture.
See our impactA short monthly note from the diocese — what happened in the parishes, in the schools, on the radio. No more than one email a month.
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