South Sudan

The protracted conflict in South Sudan has had a profound impact on the lives of children and their communities. Children continue to face risks of food insecurity, malnutrition, disease, forced recruitment into armed forces and armed groups, displacement, and loss of education opportunities.

Floods

Furthermore, the floods during 2019-2020 exacerbated the situation, and the lack of safe drinking water, inadequate excretal disposal, and poor hygiene practices leaves a big proportion of the population at risk of preventable vector/waterborne and WASH related diseases.

Multisectoral approaches

Although multisectoral approaches are frequently promoted and highly encouraged by nutrition actors in South Sudan, multisectoral and long-term programmes are not designed nationally. This is necessary to systematically reduce the prevalence of undernutrition. Furthermore, the absence of nutrition and WASH policies has an impact on local realities, such as interventions undertaken in the communities.

Peace agreement

Overall, the situation in the country has deteriorated further, as reflected in the South Sudan Humanitarian Needs Overview of 2021. It stated that over the past five years, nutrition and WASH needs have continued to rise, even after the 2018 peace agreement. However, the livelihood and food assistance support resources have not increased, resulting in straining of the already scarce resources.

Acute malnutrition

From an estimated total population of 11 million people, almost 2 million people are anticipated to suffer from acute malnutrition, of which 1.4 million are children. An estimated 7.7 million people were expected to experience acute food insecurity and worse in 2021. These numbers have increased by 15%, compared to the 6.7 million people who were acutely food insecure in 2020.

Water sources

The South Sudan Humanitarian Needs Overview 2021 revealed that 64% of people across the country rely on either unimproved or surface water sources. This influences how food is prepared and utilised in the body. Ease of access to markets and access to health care facilities impact how productive people are, and how prone they are to disease or illness.

Health system

The health and wellbeing of an estimated 4.9 million South Sudanese was anticipated to be impacted negatively by the weakened health system in 2021. This equates to a 36% increase from the 3.6 million people in 2020. Therefore, the drivers of undernutrition in South Sudan were mainly the ongoing conflict, flooding, economic crisis, declined crop production (poor quality and diversity of food), diseases (36% of children under five), pests, and an underdeveloped health care system.

Right2Grow in South Sudan

To reduce the prevalence of undernutrition among children under five, Right2Grow uses a multisectoral approach that is inclusive and gender-sensitive. This way, the partnership can contribute to the growth and development of children in South Sudan and allow them to reach their full potential in life.

Consortium

Right2Grow in South Sudan is a five-year consortium of eight developmental and humanitarian organisations comprising of four national NGOs (CIDO, UNIDOR, SPEDP and CRC) and four international NGOs (Save the Children, World Vision, Action Against Hunger and CEGAA). They all are implementing multisectoral programmes focusing on health, nutrition, food security and livelihoods, WASH, and child protection across all states in South Sudan, with the exception of CEGAA who focuses on budget advocacy.

Advocacy

The consortium recognises the complementarity of the operational presence and technical expertise of the consortium members in allocating roles and responsibilities of the programme outcomes. Through advocacy and educational activities, Right2Grow engages with various stakeholders at the local level. The goal is to influence community behavioural change and practices to reach an improvement of the nutrition and WASH status at household level. All these efforts are meant to empower the communities to participate in the consortium’s advocacy efforts.

Local services and budgets

Right2Grow seeks to establish linkages with local communities by facilitating the linkage and cooperation between local and national CSOs in Juba, engaging with high-level decision makers (government, parliament, donors etc.). Its purpose is to facilitate networks as ‘carriers’ of a concerted lobby and advocacy efforts spearheading information on the quality and quantity of local services and budgets.

Support of communities

This way we can ensure the information is used by locally rooted organisations, to gain the support of the communities, and to conduct advocacy at local level. Through the network, national CSOs can use this evidence and data to inform lobby efforts aimed at higher (national) administrative levels.

Behaviour change

In South Sudan, Right2Grow will work towards capacitating change agents in underserved communities to advocate for effective behaviour change amongst their neighbours. We support communities and CBOs to collect and analyse data on budget allocations, actual expenditure, and quality of WASH and nutrition service delivery. Right2Grow in collaboration with consortium members will lobby both Government and donors for improved funding and programming, as well support the establishment of national nutrition task force for multisectoral approach including relevant Government ministries, donors, CSOs, women led organisations, and academia.