Humanitarian Response

In contexts of armed conflict, international humanitarian organisations increasingly rely on local and national actors to deliver aid. South Sudan is no exception: while international organisations have worked with and through South Sudanese organisations for decades, the number of local and national NGOs involved in the South Sudanese humanitarian response has increased substantially since the outbreak of widespread armed conflict in 2013. The number of South Sudanese NGOs registered as members of the South Sudan NGO Forum has also grown, from 92 in 2012 to 263 in 2019. The proliferation of South Sudanese NGOs and their increasingly central role in the humanitarian response has been driven, in part, by the significant access constraints and risks associated with operating in South Sudan. International actors increasingly depend on South Sudanese NGOs to reach conflict-affected communities. These shifts are also taking place in the context of global commitments to ‘localise’ humanitarian response, with humanitarian organisations and donor governments committing to shift power and resources closer to affected populations.
South Sudan provides an opportunity for us to learn about the realities of implementing these localisation commitments in the context of protracted, complex crises, including armed conflicts. While there is a desire among many international organisations to localise humanitarian response, there are also concerns that the national NGO sector can be more easily captured by political interests that contradict humanitarian principles, and that humanitarian funds can be diverted to resource violent political economies. In South Sudan, violent conflict has been consistently driven by political structures in which claims on power can be made through violence and loyalties can be bought with money. This raises questions over how national organisations (and humanitarian assistance more broadly) play into this marketplace of money and power.
This report moves beyond abstract assumptions and global-level debates to understand the reality of the struggles and strategies of local and national organisations during complex emergencies. We focus on the histories, politico-economic dynamics and everyday realities of South Sudanese NGOs during South Sudan’s armed conflicts and intermittent periods of peace over the last four decades. We draw on consultations with over 200 people in six sites across South Sudan, including urban and rural areas, and sites controlled by rebel forces as well as sites controlled by the government. We consider South Sudanese NGOs’ institutional development and funding sources, as well as the backgrounds and motivations of their founders and staff. The report focuses primarily on the perspectives and experiences of those working for local and national NGOs, as well as local communities, authorities and former staff, thus bringing these local perspectives to the global debate on localisation.
By starting from the perspective of South Sudan and drawing on detailed ethnographic and historical research in sites across South Sudan, this report is able to make a rare, locally informed contribution to these global debates. This allows us to see the everyday efforts and motivations of South Sudanese NGOs, as well as noticing the structural issues within the aid sector which elevate the risks they face and, over time, reproduce a lack of trust in South Sudanese NGOs.

MSF performed a salary study on the remuneration practices for locally recruited staff in South Sudan to
assess its competitiveness in the labour market. The content of this report is subject to the highest degree of confidentiality and may not be distributed to third parties. The study was carried out by Mia Walle Hansen and coordinated by Finnbogi Rutur Finnbogason.

This rapid review focuses on identifying evidence on the secondary impacts of COVID-19 on women and girls in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It aims to enable a greater understanding of the unique circumstances of women and girls in the region, which could assist with the provision of effective support throughout the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath. Guided by available evidence, the review explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and girls in SSA across various issues. These include some of the following – girls’ education, social protection, unintended pregnancies, access to health services, poverty, livelihood, land rights, women’s and girls’ informal employment, food security and nutrition, female health workforce, and access to WASH. The review touches upon, but does not thoroughly investigates the following topics as they are considered in other reviews - Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH), girls’ and women’s rights, child marriage, harmful social norms, and women’s political participation, leadership and empowerment. Despite the limited data, the review found that based on emerging evidence and lessons from past health crises, there is strong evidence to suggest that women and girls in SSA will suffer from extreme and multifaceted negative secondary impact as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Some of which may include higher poverty rates, increase in unplanned pregnancies, a surge in school dropout rates and child labour of adolescent girls, loss of income and reduced financial empowerment, increased household work, reduced access to healthcare and WASH alongside increased maternal deaths, and greater food insecurity and malnutrition.

Survivors of conflict-related sexual violence continue to struggle to access adequate medical and mental health care, according to a new report issued by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan and the UN Human Rights Office.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear, if there was ever any doubt, just how important it is for everyone to have immediate and adequate access to health care,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet. “For the survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, it goes beyond treating their physical injuries and psychological trauma. It is quite simply a crucial step in giving them a chance to rebuild their lives and the lives of their families.”

The report, titled “Access to Health for Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in South Sudan,” takes an in-depth look at the adequacy of health care available in Unity and the Central and Western Equatorian regions, which account for 85 percent of conflict-related sexual violence cases documented between January 2018 and January 2020.

It found that funding for public health care in South Sudan has not been prioritized, with just 1.2 percent (USD 14 million) of the national budget allocated for this purpose. This has resulted in international organizations using donor funding to try to fill the gap. Despite the enormous financial investment, the medical response for survivors of sexual violence remains weak.

Rigorous evidence of the cost-effectiveness of investments in disaster preparedness is limited. However, overall the available data points to disaster preparedness leading to clear reductions in both humanitarian costs and losses due to crises (lost lives, assets, livelihoods). While there is general consensus on the importance of preparedness, significant challenges mean it still accounts for a very small proportion of humanitarian aid. There is a need for more research on the impact of disaster preparedness. This review details the evidence from a number of studies of disaster preparedness impact, focusing on cost (and time) effectiveness. The literature reviewed was a mixture of academic papers and development agency reports published in 2013-2018. Key findings include a study examining the economic case for investment in early response and resilience-building in disaster-prone regions of Kenya and Ethiopia concluded that early response was far more cost-effective than late humanitarian response (Fitzgibbon, 2013). Secondly, a cost-benefit analysis of emergency preparedness in relation to drought and flood hazards in Niger (Kellet & Peters, 2014) found that the benefits of investing in preparedness far outweighed the costs. Meanwhile, a 2015 study by the Boston Consulting Group found that all the emergency preparedness investments examined saved significant time and/or costs in the event of an emergency. A 2016 report (Venton, 2016) gives the findings of a Value for Money (VfM) assessment of DFID contingency funding that was provided early in the 2015/2016 Ethiopia drought crisis whereby timely procurement had helped DFID in saving 18%. A 2018 report (DEPP, 2018) gives the findings of a study of the return on investment (ROI) of DFID’s Disaster and Emergency Preparedness Programme (DEPP)’s capacity development investments in Ethiopia and the Philippines that yielded positive returns. Overall, this review found that there was evidence for cost-effectiveness of disaster preparedness, pre-financing and early action, but there remains considerable potential to increase savings. The literature points to the need for greater research into the impact of different disaster preparedness investments – as well as greater allocation of resources for preparedness.

This guidance framework is the output of discussions involving representatives from operational aid agencies and groups in South Sudan. The purpose of this guidance framework is:
1. To facilitate more nuanced understanding of organised violence in South Sudan and address potentially misleading use of catch-all terms (e.g. ‘inter-communal violence’ or ‘cattle raiding’)
2. To facilitate more constructive inter-agency dialogue and planning through a more consistent use of key terms used to describe organised violence in South Sudan
3. To summarise key considerations from a programming (rather than security/legal) perspective in relation to conflict sensitivity, livelihoods/services and protection.

This report investigates how COVID-19 and other shocks have impacted child well-being in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) during 2020 and the potential role of cash transfers and external resources to help children and economies. It reviews the latest social, economic and financial information from a range of global databases and modelling exercises, draws on emerging country-level reporting and carries out projections where recent data are unavailable. Although information remains incomplete and things are quickly evolving, the outlook is alarming.

Possible developments of movement and settlement patterns and humanitarian needs in the next six months after the re-designation of the Protection of Civilians sites.

The crisis in South Sudan calls for a critical reflection on past and forthcoming aidpractices in the country, and on the assumptions and ambitions that underpin them.

On the whole, donor engagement in South Sudan has been based on a flawedsituational framing, informing a dominant theory of change that disregarded key eliteinterests, misjudged the main conflict driver, promoted a culture of appeasement,and obscured symptoms of a deeply rooted crisis of governance. As this crisispushed itself to the fore in mid-December 2013, the old narrative of development andpartnership has become untenable. Donors should prepare and plan for working inan environment where armed conflict is cyclical and where periods of relative calmoffer limited options for longer-term development schemes or sustainable reform,narrowing the scope for constructive engagement and enhancing the risks involved.

Since the Second Sudanese Civil War in 1983, South Sudan has seen significant levels of displacement driven by conflict, resource stress, climate shocks, and disease. Movement, already an endemic feature of life in South Sudan, has enabled many South Sudanese households or household members to escape or mitigate years of shocks, but those deciding to move have often faced competing needs, physical risks, and constraints on movement. In order to better understand how both displacement routes and displacing households’ decision-making regarding movement has evolved over the past 35 years, REACH conducted research, consisting of secondary data review and quantitative and qualitative analysis, on long-term population movements trends in South Sudan between 1983-2019, to help humanitarians improve their ability to plan for early response in areas likely to receive displacement.