Humanitarian Response

South Sudan has witnessed intermittent civil war and widespread communal and localised violence since gaining independence in 2011. 7.5 million people, 64% of the population, are in need of humanitarian assistance.
Taking into account a range of variables that affect South Sudanese access to basic needs and services, these scenarios consider developments that could have humanitarian consequences and impact on access to basic needs within South Sudan over the coming six to twelve months.

In recent times, there has been an increasing drive to demonstrate value for money (VfM) for investments made in public health globally. However, there is limited information on practical insights and best practices that have helped implementing organisations to successfully embed VfM in practice for programming and evaluation.

In this article, the authors discuss strengths and weaknesses of approaches that been used and insights on best practices to manage for, demonstrate, and compare VfM, using a health pooled fund programme implemented in conflict-affected South Sudan as case study supported by evidence reported in the literature while critiquing adequacy of the available approaches in this setting. An expanded and iterative process framework to guide VfM embedding for health programming and evaluation is then proposed. In doing so, this article provides a very relevant one-stop source for critical insight into how to embed VfM in practice. Uptake and scale-up of the proposed framework can be essential in improving VfM and aid effectiveness which will ultimately contribute to progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Adolescence is a crucial and defining stage in a girl’s life.However, girls around the world too often face unique risksof gender discrimination and gender-based violence (GBV),including sexual violence, human trafficking, forced marriage and sexual exploitation and abuse. This is particularly the case in humanitarian settings, where girls’ already-limited access to vital services and family and peer support networks
are disrupted by crises and displacement. Despite this, humanitarian programmes and policies do not adequately
address adolescent girls’ needs. Caught between childhood and adulthood, these girls are often not able or willing to access services designed for adult women or young girls.
Adolescent girls face intersecting risks of violence due to their relative lack of power because of both their gender, and their status as children or young people in a world dominated by men. GBV against adolescent girls is rooted in systemic gender inequality, which underpins violence and leads to girls experiencing violence and harmful social norms and practices (like child, early, and forced marriage) at higher rates than their
male counterparts. Harmful social norms can also compound girls’ experience of violence, as some girls are considered “defiled” or “ruined” after rape.
This brief highlights research that examines the unique experience of adolescent girls by specifically exploring the types of gender-based violence and the drivers of this violence affecting this group within the context of South Sudan, where women and girls experience high levels of gender inequality and subordination. Key findings from this mixed-methods research can inform policymakers, UN agencies and donors as they identify and support programs that will effectively prevent and respond to violence against adolescent girls in conflict and
humanitarian settings.

This report is based on fieldwork in Unity, Jonglei, and Upper Nile states from August-December 2020. Due to access issues for research related to Covid-19, some of this research was conducted remotely. The report surveys the humanitarian access issues produced by conflict in 2020 through a series of focused case studies. These case studies are not intended to be comprehensive, but are rather thematic, and indicate some of the broader political-economic structures in which humanitarian access issues are embedded, how they are intertwined with issues of civilian protection, and how such issues are perceived by communities and armed-non-state-actors in South Sudan.

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.