A/HRC/43/56 ranked South Sudan as the third worst nation state in which to reside, at 186 out of 189 countries.204 38. It is estimated that 1.3 million children will need treatment for acute malnutrition in 2020, 300,000 of whom will be severely acute malnourished. Despite a decrease in military confrontations, the proportion of children acutely malnourished grew from 13 per cent in 2018 to 16 per cent in 2019, above the emergency threshold of 15 percent. 205 39. The effects of food insecurity were compounded during the period under review by abnormally heavy rains and high levels of seasonal flooding. On 29 October 2019, President Kiir declared a state of emergency covering 30 counties in Greater Bahr el Ghazal, Greater Upper Nile and Greater Equatoria. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that close to one million people were affected across the country. Some 72,600 metric tons of cereals were further lost due to flooding, 206 amounting to approximately a 15 per cent loss in production. The situation remains worse for those internally displaced, including vulnerable children, elderly, widows, and disabled individuals. 40. While poverty and bifurcated weather seasons in the South Sudanese subsistence economy have substantially affected the availability of food countrywide, access to food and other vital objects indispensable to the survival of the population have been undermined by the actions of the government in control of strategic locations and where they have deliberately implemented strategies responsible for food insecurity. Armed groups holding territory for military advantage have behaved in a similar fashion. 41. Both government forces and armed groups have for example pursued policies responsible for the starvation of the population in Wau and Unity States (A/HRC/43/56/CRP.1). Such policies were envisaged and implemented as part of a wider strategy to deprive enemy communities of resources in order to force their capitulation, allow soldiers and militias to reward themselves, forcibly displace communities from ancestral lands that could then be expropriated or simply to compel individuals to join different factions engaged in the conflict. Denial of humanitarian access and displacement brought about by unlawful tactics have significantly exacerbated famine in different parts of the country, depriving hundreds of thousands of civilians of vital needs including access to food (A/HRC/43/56/CRP.1). Violations and alleged crimes - findings 42. The Commission has reasonable grounds to believe that both government and opposition forces attacked, destroyed and rendered useless objects indispensable to the survival of the population and used starvation of civilians as means to achieve military objectives. Denying access to food was used as an instrument to target and punish nonaligning communities especially those deemed to support the enemy while rewarding supporters and maintaining community loyalties. Some victims described deliberate policies pursued in both government and opposition forces-controlled areas to destroy and loot primary means of livelihood such as fresh crops, livestock, and ready harvest on which civilians were dependent for their survival. 43. The Commission further has reasonable grounds to believe that the government of South Sudan did not fulfil its obligations under national and international law to progressively use all resources at its disposal to prioritize access to food and ensure freedom from hunger for its population in affected areas. It neither prevented, investigated nor punished perpetrators of these crimes. The Commission collected information which demonstrated, moreover, that disproportionate resources were deliberately diverted and spent 204 South Sudan Human Development Indicators, UNDP, 2019, available at http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/SSD. 205 Humanitarian Needs Overview, OCHA, November 2019, at p. 3, available at https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/sites/www.humanitarianresponse.info/files/documents/files/ss _20191120_south_sudan_humanitarian_needs_overview_2020.pdf 206 Country Brief October 2019, WFP, available at https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP0000110949/download/?_ga=2.48343718.1269336333.1575637372-1581897920.1575637372. 35