International donors have pledged more than $600 million dollars in aid for South Sudan as the world's newest nation faces the worst famine Africa has witnessed since Ethiopia in the 1980's.
But the United Nations says the money falls well short of the estimated $1.8 billion needed to avoid a major humanitarian crisis.
"The scale is huge," the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan, Tony Lanzer said.
"I think that what we are facing at the moment is that by December of this year one in two citizens in South Sudan, that's over six million people, will either have been displaced, be starving or be dead,"
The six month civil war has caused an acute shortage of food which is threatening the lives of 2.5 million children.
Save the Children say their feeding clinic in the village of Akobo in Jonglei state is full to capacity with malnourished infants.
Mother Nyapuoch walked for miles with her two baby twin girls to get to the clinic and says she fed them potentially noxious wild berries just to survive another day.
"That's the only food we have," she said.
"We normally bring the seeds from the bush and we suck them to try to get some nutrients out. I am worried that by next month, there'll be no food left for me and my children."
In the states worst affected by the fighting - Jonglei, Upper Nile and Unity - children have been forced to drop out of school to scavenge for leaves and wild berries to stave off starvation. Many are now suffering from diarrhoea, a potentially fatal condition when children's bodies are weakened by hunger.
When the oil-producing nation peacefully broke away from the North in 2011 people were full of hope and momentarily forgot the lingering internal ethnic grievances. But by mid-December last year the old wounds had surfaced again.
"In the six months since fighting broke out, there has been extreme violence and deliberate attacks on civilians, often based on ethnicity or political affiliation," the United Nations Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Valerie Amos said.
"Medical facilities have been destroyed. There has been widespread sexual violence against women and children, the recruitment of young people for military operations and the use of cluster munitions."
South Sudan's opposition has accused the government of obstructing the international aid effort. But after the aid boost announcement at the donor conference in Norway, South Sudan's Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial promised unimpeded access.
"The government will allow free movement of delivery of humanitarian food and assistance to all the areas within the Republic of South Sudan," Minister Marial said.
Australia has also pledged an extra $2.6 million in humanitarian aid to help try to avert famine, bringing the total Australian contribution to South Sudan to nearly $13.4 million.
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