UN official Lisa Grande spoke to the wide range of crisis factors currently facing Southern Sudan in a recent press conference (via ReliefWeb, transcript .pdf). Grande characterized the current situation as a Humanitarian Perfect Storm, a noted that it will be nearly impossible to meet the rising crisis using only the resources in place.
For much of the last two years the focus of NGOs working in Southern Sudan has been on development and capicity building. But over the last few months the focus has shifted back to relief and crisis response as the region has been destablized by human and enviromental factors.
Grande outlines the major complicating factors in her introduction at the press conference:
Humanitarian Storm: The best way to characterize the humanitarian situation in Southern Sudan is as a “humanitarian perfect storm”. What we mean by this is that we are seeing a convergence of factors in the south that are putting at least 40 percentage of the population at real risk. There are three main factors leading to this situation: 1) spiraling inter-tribal conflict, 2) a massive food gap and 3) the budget crisis.
Beginning to Remember 
I hope other factors can make real progress possible.