S. Sudan in urgent need of $675m for humanitarian operations
November 9, 2014 (JUBA) – About $675 million of the $1.2 billion of funds for South Sudan’s Crisis Response Plan is urgently needed to sustain humanitarian operations until the end of the year.
The funding levels reportedly vary across sectors with education, emergency telecommunications, multi-sector and protection sectors still less than 50% funded, while logistics, health and mine action were best funded with 81, 88 and 99% funding respectively.
An estimated over 1.5 million have been displaced in South Sudan since violence broke out late last year, with aid agencies anticipating a looming famine outbreak in the country next year.
Despite all these challenges, aid agencies continued to provide life-saving assistance to people in need. Access remains a challenge due to insecurity, logistical constraints caused by the floods, and administrative delays in procurement of humanitarian supplies.
An estimated 3.8 million people have reportedly been targeted for life-saving assistance by December. However, in spite the challenging operational environment, aid workers have reportedly reached 92% of the people targeted with some form of assistance and continue to appeal for more resources to sustain the aid operation until the end of the year.
“There is need for security guarantees in affected areas, to facilitate delivery of available assistance,” OCHA noted.
Meanwhile, OCHA says the Common Humanitarian Fund (CHF) was the third largest donor to projects responding to the needs identified in the Crisis Response Plan 2014
“The CHF has allocated and disbursed close to $135 million since January 2014 to some 212 projects. As of 6 November, ten donors have deposited a total of about $144 million and committed an additional $4.8 million. Pledges amount to some $15 million,” OCHA said.
About 73% of all CHF contributions were reportedly provided by Sweden and the United Kingdom, complemented by Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Ireland and Switzerland.
“The CHF funded projects are providing critical assistance across South Sudan, to the displaced people, refugees and host communities,” partly reads OCHA’s latest report.
About 67% of the projects, it further says, are in South Sudan’s most violence affected states of Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile, where close to 1.2 million people have been internally displaced.
“Discussions on the prioritisation of the latest $20 million CHF allocation are underway,” stressed the humanitarian agency.
On the other hand, however, cluster prioritisation for the $20 million Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) was reportedly completed, with partners said to have considered humanitarian response, security reinforcement and protection cluster activities as priority funding sectors.
CERF is a fund of contributions from donors which makes money available immediately to start relief work when needs arise. Since 2006, 125 UN Member States and dozens of private-sector donors and regional governments have reportedly contributed $3.54 billion to the fund. CERF has allocated more than $3.4 billion for humanitarian agencies operating in 88 countries and territories.
(ST)