More than one million people in South Sudan have fled their homes at a crucial time of the year: planting season.
Famine, aid officials say, could be the result, and the UN's top official for human rights said Wednesday she is appalled by the apparent lack of concern by the country's two warring leaders that mass hunger looms.
"If famine does take hold later in the year - and the humanitarian agencies are deeply fearful that it will - responsibility for it will lie squarely with the country's leaders, who agreed to a cessation of hostilities in January and then failed to observe it themselves," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navy Pillay, referring to South Sudan's president and the former vice-president.
UNICEF is warning that up to 50,000 children could die of malnutrition this year.
South Sudan is on "the verge of catastrophe," warned Pillay, speaking to journalists. The country could descend into genocide, warned Adama Dieng, the UN envoy for the prevention of genocide, who also spoke to the media.
"To the survivors of the genocide, we owe a pledge to take all possible measures within our power to protect populations from another Rwanda, there is no excuse for inaction," said Dieng. "It is clear that the conflict has taken a dangerous trajectory, and civilians are being deliberately targeted based on their ethnicity and perceived political affiliation."
In a sign of how gravely the U. S. views the spiralling violence in the world's newest country, Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Juba, the capital, this week as part of a multicountry trip through Africa.
He said the U. S. government is closely considering levying sanctions against South Sudan's leaders, whom Kerry said are pursuing oil, money and power.
Fighting broke out in mid-December between supporters of President Salva Kiir and former vice-president Riek Machar. Thousands of people have died, including hundreds of people killed in ethnically targeted massacres.