UNHCR WARNS OF LOOMING HUMANITARIAN CRISIS IN SOUTH SUDAN, AMIDST ONGOING FIGHTING AND CORONAVIRUS THREAT
Covid19
How the score is calculated
The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.
- Affected people
- 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
- Deaths
- 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
- Displaced people
- 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
- Casualties
- 100 or more: +8
- Story wording
- +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.
Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.
This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.
Historical record
Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07
Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.
In brief
- What happenedUNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is warning today of the potentially devastating impact of a COVID-19 outbreak in South Sudan.
- How many affectedDisplaced persons: 1.7 million
- What help is neededThose remaining lack sufficient medicines, qualified health professionals and medical equipment.
What changed
First retained snapshot
No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.
Situation
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is warning today of the potentially devastating impact of a COVID-19 outbreak in South Sudan. Years of conflict and a number of recent natural disasters have left many internally displaced people, refugees and host communities throughout the country struggling to meet their basic needs and now particularly vulnerable to the threat of COVID-19. “Years of violence have severely damaged South Sudan’s health services,” said Raouf Mazou, UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Operations. “After last year’s floods and the recent locust swarm, people are struggling. Together with the threat of COVID-19, this is a perfect storm that may lead to potentially terrible consequences for millions of people living in already precarious situations, if the virus rapidly spreads.” To date, there have been 35 confirmed cases of coronavirus in South Sudan. Many of the 1.7 million internally displaced people in the country are living in crowded, collective sites where they face poor sanitary conditions and limited or no access to health facilities. Many of the country’s health facilities have been damaged or destroyed during years of fighting. Those remaining lack sufficient medicines, qualified health professionals and medical equipment. UNHCR and its partners continues to work closely with South Sudanese authorities to ensure forcibly displaced populations are included in the country’s national COVID-19 preparedness and response plan. We have constructed five emergency treatment centres to support this effort, with five more set to be built in the coming weeks. COVID-19 prevention, awareness and control efforts are being put in place in all camps. Refugees and IDPs have been given extra rations of soap and additional buckets to help maintain hygiene. Outreach campaigns to spread awareness about COVID-19 prevention and treatment are ongoing. However, ongoing inter-communal clashes, together with measures intended to limit the spread of coronavirus, such as restrictions on movement and goods, are creating signficiant challenges for humanitarian organisations to provide much-needed protection and aid to affected populations. Fighting has left many people struggling to survive. A large proportion of the country’s rural population rely on their livestock and farms, which are often killed or damaged during the clashes, as their major source of income. This is worsening already dire levels of poverty, with many people having no access to social safety nets, at a time when the economic impact of COVID-19 is increasing. UNHCR echoes the appeal of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres for a global ceasefire. Warring parties in South Sudan must immediately cease hostilities, now, in these unprecedented circumstances, more than ever, to ensure people are able to access life-saving assistance. The good progress made following the 2018 Peace Deal must not stall. Momentum must continue on the pace and implementation of the agreement at this critical juncture in the country’s history. Further support to UNHCR and other humanitarian organisations from the international community is urgently needed. Severe underfunding continues to hamper our efforts to save lives. However, support to the COVID-19 response must not come at the price of neglecting pre-existing humanitarian needs.
Linked charities and agencies
WorldsAid verification
A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against the retained source record, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. 1 human-impact figure was separated from the narrative and dated where the source allowed. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.
Verified figures
- Displaced persons
- 1.7 million retained at 2020-09-02
What we knew when
- WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
- Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.
Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.
Provenance
This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.
Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz
Verified
SHA-256 e7df1bf86262352d54e906c6ecd4dd0fb2fab20665f555c7d7db0166e78712c0No external source link was stored for this record.