The UN World Food Programme (WFP) on Thursday said it had received an additional 4.5 million dollars contribution to provide humanitarian support to more than seven million South Sudanese who are food insecure.
Simon Cammelbeeck, WFP’s acting country director in South Sudan, said this in a joint statement issued in Juba.
Cammelbeeck said the new funding from Germany would also enable the UN Humanitarian Air Service to keep providing flights for the humanitarian community.
It will allow us to preposition food ahead of the rainy season and deliver timely assistance to the people in need while giving the entire humanitarian community a reliable airlink across the country,” Cammelbeeck said.
He said the new funding would be used to provide food and nutrition assistance to vulnerable people, including the displaced persons and children under the age of two across the country.
The UN agency said it assisted 5.1 million people in 2018, providing food assistance for people building or restoring community assets such as roads, emergency school meals to keep children in school.
Others are the treatment of moderate acute malnutrition among children, pregnant and nursing women.
The UN agency said it is preparing to respond to needs resulting from a poor agricultural season in 2018 worsened by continued conflict.
Jan Thiel, Ambassador of Germany to South Sudan, said his country was committed to working together with WFP and other humanitarian agencies to help some of the most vulnerable people in South Sudan.
In another development, South Sudan on Thursday said that it was working on proposal by countries within the regional trade body, the East African Community (EAC), to ease travel and cost of doing business.
Paul Akech, Minister of Trade and EAC Affairs, said that the five member countries – Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi – have offered to waive visa fees to ease travel for South Sudanese within the region.
Akech said his office had told technocrats within government ministries to set up offices to help coordinate and expedite EAC issues.
South Sudan applied to join the regional bloc in 2011 after winning independence from Sudan but was finally admitted into the EAC in 2016.
South Sudan has started to benefit from the EAC with its private sector being integrated into the East African Business Council, issuance of EAC digital passports and also One Stop Border Posts, which have been set up at borders with its neighbours to eliminate trade obstacles.
The regional trade bloc aims at eliminating barriers to regional trade through its various protocols like customs union, common market and later on political federation which has not yet been tackled.
South Sudan descended into civil war in late 2013, and the conflict has created one of the fastest growing refugee crises in the world.
The UN estimates that about four million South Sudanese have been displaced internally and externally.
In September 2018, South Sudan’s conflicting parties signed a final peace deal in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa after negotiations brokered by Sudan government with a mandate by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development in Africa.
