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UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Humanitarian organizations are appealing for 1.6 billion U.S. dollars to provide life-saving assistance and protection to 5.8 million people across South Sudan in 2017, a UN spokesman told reporters here Monday.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan, Eugene Owusu, said that the humanitarian situation in the country has deteriorated dramatically due to the devastating combination of conflict, economic decline and climatic shocks, Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here.
Owusu said that in 2017, there will be unprecedented needs, in an unprecedented number of locations, and that these needs will increase during the upcoming lean season, Haq said.
"Mr. Owusu stressed it is imperative that this appeal is funded early and fully, so that the aid workers deployed across South Sudan can respond robustly and rapidly," he added.
Over the past year, the humanitarian crisis in South Sudan has deepened and spread, affecting people in areas previously considered stable and exhausting the coping capacity of those already impacted.
Three years on from the outbreak of conflict in December 2013, nearly 7.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection across the country as a result of armed conflict, inter-communal violence, economic crisis, disease outbreaks and climatic shocks.
New clashes have left one in four people uprooted. More than three million people have been forced to flee their homes since the conflict began in December 2013, including nearly 1.9 million people who have been internally displaced, with 50 percent estimated to be children, and more than 1.2 million people have fled as refugees to neighboring countries.
