Juba, Khartoum extend agreement on humanitarian aid for further 6 months
January 5, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan’s Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) has announced an extension of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the transit of humanitarian aid to the neighbouring South Sudan for another six months.
Sudan’s HAC commissioner Ahmed Mohamed Adam and South Sudan’s ambassador to Khartoum Mayan Dut Wol and the representative of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Sudan Adnan Khan issued a joint statement on Monday on the extension.
The statement pointed that Sudan’s government agreed to this extension at the request of South Sudan’s government and in the spirit of cooperation and due to the ongoing humanitarian needs.
Last August, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan said that representatives from the governments of Sudan and South Sudan have approved an operational plan that will create a humanitarian corridor between the two countries.
The plan, which was developed and prepared by WFP, will enable the latter to deliver close to 63,000 metric tonnes of life-saving food assistance to 744,000 people in the northern parts of South Sudan who have been affected by the conflict that erupted in South Sudan since December 2013.
Under the initial deal, 1.853 metric tonnes of food have been transferred across border and river transport to the needy population in South Sudan.
Sudan Tribune recalls that the current MoU was set expire on January 8th, 2015.
Last May, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-Net) said that about 3.5 million South Sudanese are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. 2.4 million people face food insecurity at the Crisis level and 1.1 million people are at the Emergency level.
The roughly 30 per cent of the population is mainly concentrated in the troubled Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei states which are not far from the Sudanese border.
(ST)