A child in southern Sudan survives on food distributed by aid workers

In this story:

• Feeding fairly?
• Survival of the fittest
• Peace talks next month
• Related stories and sites

RUMBEK, Sudan (CNN) -- Relief workers trying to get food to hundreds of thousands of starving people in southern Sudan may only have one month to get food distributed along key corridors of the war-torn area.

Early Wednesday, one rebel faction, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, agreed to a British proposal for a three-month cease-fire to allow food distribution. The SPLA said its truce was limited to the Bahr al-Ghazal and Upper Nile provinces, where aid agencies say more than 700,000 people are starving.

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CNN's Catherine Bond on the famine in Sudan
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But the Sudanese government in Khartoum only agreed to stop fighting for a month, effective immediately.

The SPLA has been battling the Khartoum government since 1983 for autonomy from the Arab and Muslim north. Southern Sudan is a mostly Christian and animist area.

The U.N. World Food Program estimates the fighting, combined with a drought, has put 2.6 million people at risk of starvation -- 1.2 million of them in rebel-held areas in the south.

Feeding fairly?

A woman recieves the sack of corn that is supposed to feed a family of six

Because distributing relief supplies is relatively new in Sudan, there is no traditional system in place to alert the starving that food is available -- or to ensure a fair distribution of the goods.

In Bahr al-Ghazal, some people told CNN they walked three to four days to get to Rumbek, where 4,000 sacks of grain had been delivered to an airstrip.

Each woman who came to get food was limited to one large sack of corn a month to feed a family of six.

A widower with six small children tried to get a food hand-out, but he was not welcomed.

"I went to the airstrip," the widower told CNN, "and the people said, 'You are a man, go away; it's women who come here.'"

Survival of the fittest

A malnourished man receives aid

Despite efforts to feed the malnourished, there is not enough food to go around.

Relief workers say some of the children weigh a third of what they should and that the undernourished and underdeveloped continue to arrive daily.

Sometimes mothers have to choose which of their children to feed and which to leave to die.

"So she decides to give (food to) the children who have the likelihood of survival and leave the severely malnourished one to wither away," aid worker Jok Madut Jok said.

Peace talks next month

An estimated 1.5 million people have died in the fighting and accompanying famine. International relief agencies say the fighting and a lack of funds keep them from getting food to the worst-hit areas.

The government and the rebels are due to hold peace talks in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa next month. In May, during talks in Kenya, both sides agreed to an internationally supervised vote on the status of the south.

Correspondent Catherine Bond, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.