South Sudan

South Sudan is one of the project pilot countries in East Africa. The activities in South Sudan are coordinated by HI.

In South Sudan, older people, women, adolescent girls and children with disabilities are especially vulnerable to marginalization, discrimination, violence, and exploitation.

Key Facts

Over a decade after independence and six years after the signing of the revitalized peace agreement, people in South Sudan continue to face critical humanitarian conditions. The humanitarian crisis has persisted due to a combination of sporadic armed clashes and intercommunal violence, food insecurity, public health challenges and climatic shocks. These factors have severely affected people’s livelihoods and hampered access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), education and health services.

Since the onset of the Sudan crisis, over one million people have arrived in South Sudan seeking safety. Of these, 70% are South Sudanese nationals returning home, whilst the rest includes over 200,000 Sudanese refugees which exerts more strains on the limited resources in South Sudan.  Furthermore, the economic crisis, ongoing political tension between the warring parties and widespread flooding deepened people’s needs. Protection concerns remain high, especially for women and girls.

Disability-Inclusion in Humanitarian Response

  • Despite South Sudan signed the United Nation Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2024, evidence shows that older people, women, adolescent girls and children with disabilities still continues to face significant challenges in accessing food, protection, non-food items, safe water and health care services, which often result in heightened protection risks.
  • Despite positive strides realized from Phase 3-LNOB, the capacity and knowledge of humanitarian actors to ensure proper age and disability inclusion through operationalization of IASC Guidelines on Inclusion remain limited. As a result, people with disabilities are often excluded from the programmes. There is a significant need to raise awareness and to build the capacities of multi-sectoral humanitarian actors, especially those at higher coordination level or clusters, at the Inter-Cluster Coordination Group (ICCG) and the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) to ensure the access to humanitarian services, inclusive data in the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC) and the Humanitarian Needs Overview and Response Plan (HNRP).
  • HI continuous to receive constant requests from the wider humanitarian coordination bodies to provide trainings and technical support on inclusive programming that focus on inclusive project cycle management, inclusive accountability towards affected populations (AAP) and inclusive MEAL, as well as data collection.

Project Location

The Phase 4 will be implemented in the capital of South Sudan, Juba and Wau due to the presence of many Humanitarian actors, persistent humanitarian needs due to presence of Refugees from Sudan, HI existing presence and linkages with key partners including Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs).

Activities

Key project activities in South Sudan are:

  • Launch meetings with OPDs and humanitarian actors.
  • Facilitation and capacity strengthening of established localized technical support mechanisms.
  • Capacity strengthening on inclusive data, Humanitarian needs and response plans (HNRPs), indicators etc.
  • Document and share lessons learned on systematic integration of disability in coordination mechanisms at country level.
  • Roll-out and training of trainers on inclusive WASH, health, and protection learning packages.
  • RAAL-lab workshops to support adaption of humanitarian tools and programming practices in WASH, Health and Protection.
  • Support efforts to enhance the evidence base on the meaningful participation of persons with disabilities in, and their access to, humanitarian services.
  • Strengthening the capacity of OPDs to meaningfully participate in the humanitarian coordination system, and empowering them to take ownership of the tool sets developed for disability-inclusive programming in humanitarian action.
  • Service contracting of selected OPDs to participate in the humanitarian coordination system, facilitate project activities and participate in resource mobilization on country level.
  • Support OPDs to participate in regional peer-exchange workshops

Partners

The South Sudan team will work closely with the selected Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) to jointly implement the project. More detailed information will be provided later.