Pearson: South Sudan feels hit as COVID cuts support to aid groups

COVID has forced us to turn inward, both to survive and to protect others. To do so, we’ve had to put aside some important things that touch us.

One significant consequences of this pandemic has been a steep decline in support for international development projects worldwide.

Groups like Canadian Aid for South Sudan (CASS), of which I’m executive director, haven’t been able to visit the region for two years due to COVID. The timing couldn’t be worse, since the United Nations has called the crisis there a “perfect storm” of events that has left its 12 million people reeling.

Climate change has resulted in massive flooding, obliterating years of agricultural potential. A bloody civil war has disrupted much of the population and has yet to be brought under control.  And, finally, a humanitarian crisis is taxing the world’s ability to end it.

Here are some of the numbers, as of last month:

• 8.3 million people need humanitarian assistance

• 2.3 million South Sudanese refugees

• 1.7 million people internally displaced

• 34,000 people living in displacement in protected sites

• 1.4 million children suffering malnutrition

• 483,000 women suffering malnutrition

• 809,000 people affected by floods that began last May

These are staggering numbers, affecting almost the entire population and creating a domino effect of humanitarian emergencies. But due to its largely remote communities, only 12,400 COVID-19 cases have been reported.

This is the pressing situation CASS faces. As donations have declined during the virus crisis, visits have been suspended and some projects discontinued.

And the agency suffered a heavy blow when our key local worker died suddenly mid-pandemic.  William Ater, a former child soldier who went on to get a university degree and become the region’s deputy governor, had been our close friend since he accompanied our first trip in 1999.

Vital to much of our efforts in the Aweil region of South Sudan were girls’ and women’s programs we’d been overseeing for almost two decades. We built two high schools and a number of primary schools, in part to help females gain opportunities for education, protection, and independence. The structures remain, but our ability to cover learning costs has declined, despite our best efforts at raising awareness and funds.

Ultimately, CASS’s board made some tough decisions at a December meeting, sidelining clean water, agriculture and other programs due to lack of resources. But it committed to support women’s programs for the next five to 10 years. It’s a challenging commitment, given the COVID circumstances, but more than two decades’ work in South Sudan has taught us its people are resilient, intelligent and highly adaptable.

We will continue to invest heavily in our scholarship programs – public, secondary, post-secondary – and support women eager to take on leadership roles.

There was much reason to be hopeful for South Sudan in 2013, before the conflict began. But those heady days have been replaced by a daily grind for survival. As they watch the developed world consolidate its resources to fight off the domestic COVID challenge, Southern Sudanese citizens face an apparently overwhelming future with less investment from outside their borders. The last thing they need is for groups like CASS to end their programs.

In London and area, thousands of people who care for important humanitarian causes overseas are facing their own struggles to remain relevant in an increasingly domestic-centred world.

Perhaps, when the pandemic threat eases, those struggling for daily survival in faraway places will claim Canadians’ attention once more. Until then, for groups like CASS, hope and diligence must prevail.

As Winston Churchill once said, “It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.” Humanitarian groups know exactly what that means.

Glen Pearson is co-director of the London Food Bank and a former Liberal MP for London North Centre.