Donors give South Sudan $77m humanitarian aid

The South Sudan Humanitarian Fund (SSHF) has received $77.5 million aid to avert the growing humanitarian crises in the war-torn state, officials confirmed.

The UN Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Juba, said in an email to the media on Thursday that the funding has been disbursed since last month.

OCHA explained that the funding would target health, nutrition, water and sanitation, food security and livelihoods, education, emergency shelter and non-food items for the displaced persons

“To date, SSHF has allocated $51.4 million to support priority humanitarian activities in alignment with the 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP),” it said.

The donors include the Netherlands, the UK, Norway, Belgium, Ireland, Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, Luxembourg, and Germany.

OCHA said 39.6 percent of the allocations went to national NGOs as the traditional implementing partners, while 39.2 and 21.2 percent went to the international ones and UN agencies respectively.

The priority regions, OCHA said further, were Jonglei with 33 percent, Unity State with 20 percent, Upper Nile 17 percent and Eastern Equatoria 8 percent.

The locations, OCHA went on, reflected the severity of the humanitarian needs, where people faced the highest risk of destitution due to the actual or imminent absence of basic services.

UN ranked South Sudan crises as the worst in the continent after the Rwanda 1994 genocide.

South Sudan has about 2.7 million internally displaced persons and 3 million refugees in the neighbouring countries.

The humanitarian crises has been caused by the war that erupted in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Dr Riek Machar, fell out.