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 displaced1 (with 50 per cent estimated to be children2 ) and more than 1.2 million who have fled as refugees to neighbouring countries, bringing the total number of South Sudanese refugees in the region to more than 1.3 million.