The worsening security situation in South Sudan has severely hampered transportation of vital aid supplies, creating the risk of a humanitarian catastrophe, according to a UNICEF logistics expert based in the region.
"If nothing is done, it will turn into a disaster," Yuji Taketomo said in an interview during a brief visit to Japan in September from the fledgling northeast African nation.
His task in South Sudan, which gained independence in 2011 and is struggling with poverty and food shortages, is to secure routes for delivering food and other relief aid to its 1.4 million internally displaced people — especially malnourished children.