World Bank, UN agree to enhance South Sudan Police capacity
May 23, 2007 (JUBA) — The World Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) inked on Tuesday May 22 an agreement to increase the capacity of the police and reorganize the prisons to deliver professional services across Southern Sudan.
The $5.3 million grant, dubbed “Southern Sudan Police and Correctional Service Support”, is funded by the Multi-Donor Trust Fund for Southern Sudan (MDTF-S) which is administered by the World Bank. The project was jointly prepared and appraised by the Government of Southern Sudan, the UNDP and other stake holders.
Under the agreement the UNDP will construct a network of police stations and training centres, provide equipment, train police forces, and facilitate the development of a code of ethics to enhance professionalism in the force. As for the prisons, the UNDP will improve the infrastructure, provide equipment and facilitate reorganization and training to ensure more humane treatment of prisoners.
This project is part of a larger program undertaken by the UNDP to promote human security in cooperation with the Southern Sudan government, says the Senior Rule of Law Advisor at the UNDP Juba office, SueTatten. She adds, “We aim at establishing public service oriented police and correctional facilities where prisoners undergo vocational training and rehabilitation to become productive members of the society, thereby reducing the chance for recidivism [relapsing to crime].”
After two decades of war, Southern Sudan remains highly militarized environment, facing challenges in building understanding of the rule of law in a civilian society. There are very few police stations currently in existence and of those that are operational, the management staff is lacking in both sufficient numbers and adequate capacity to operate in a civilian, post-conflict context.
The prisons are in a state of disrepair and, in many cases, are not sufficient to adequately maintain the numbers of inmates. Additional challenges include the need to have specialized treatment and separate facilities for women inmates with children and juveniles.
Klaus Decker of the Justice Reform Practice Group of the World Bank praised the agreement between the two institutions saying, “we are glad that the World Bank and UNDP have established good working relations to allow for the smooth implementation of this project, which is based on the priorities defined by the Joint Assessment Mission (JAM) as well as the need identified by the Oversight Committee of the Government of Southern Sudan and donors.”
The projects supported by the MDTF include the Rapid Impact Project that provides medical supplies to 840 hospitals and clinics in Southern Sudan. For schools the project delivered 40,000 education kits and 950,000 textbooks for primary schools and is supporting the construction of 100 new primary schools. This project also supports among other activities the renovation of government offices.
(ST)
On the net