South Sudan

In South Sudan, an estimated nine million people, including refugees and returnees from Sudan, will experience critical humanitarian needs in 2024. An estimated 7.1 million people will require food assistance, with children at critical risk of malnutrition. An estimated 1.6 million young children are at risk of acute malnutrition.

The conflict in Sudan has resulted in the arrival of vulnerable people who require assistance, driving up market costs and further stretching coping capacities. Women and girls remain at risk of gender-based violence. People across South Sudan suffer violence, displacement, and high levels of poverty, along with lack of livelihoods, and limited access to basic services. To compound the situation, South Sudan has been hit hard by climate crises, with parts of the country experiencing prolonged dry spells and others experiencing flooding.

In 2023, Action Against Hunger strengthened our approach to reinforce connections between our humanitarian, development, and peace-building interventions. We strengthened our research and monitoring systems and practices to enhance knowledge and evidence generation. Our teams worked with lawmakers, youth champions, ministries, national and state authorities, and grassroots leaders to advocate for policy change and address hunger and climate change.

Action Against Hunger’s nutrition teams conducted ten surveys to deepen understanding of the hunger situation in South Sudan. We also scaled up our work with care groups to improve child nutrition and health, which included working with men to increase their involvement in childcare.

Our teams integrated primary health care services within nutrition through our mobile health teams. We worked to improve WASH services and infrastructure management. To address climate-driven hunger, we scaled up programmes such as our rice growing project in Fangak, to enhance community resilience. Additionally, our team completed gender- based violence risk mitigation research and conducted two gender analyses. These studies will help to design and deliver safe programmes across all sectors.

Our programme has also focused on the intersection of gender-based violence and hunger. For example, after conducting risk mitigation research, we have recruited additional female staff at nutrition sites so that women feel comfortable coming in for malnutrition treatment. We’ve also piloted referral services for women suffering from gender-based violence, offering psychological and medical first aid. The women are also eligible for cash and food assistance for their families during medical or psychological treatment since women are also responsible for feeding other members of their households.