Lessons for aid workers in South Sudan

“The largest question I was asked since being here was: ‘Can we do this? Can we solve the famine,’” said Alejandro Guzman, head of the World Food Programme’s emergency response unit in South Sudan.

In February 2017, when famine was declared in two counties in South Sudan — the world’s youngest nation — the 30-year-old Venezuelan-American found himself at the center of the crisis. South Sudanese government officials and the international community questioned Guzman, urgently, about whether WFP was capable of pulling 100,000 people out of starvation.