HIGHLIGHTS
Efforts are underway to relocate refugees from Ezo settlement - UNHCR Representative visited Yambio on 4 January to conduct high-level meetings with Government Officials and the Police Commissioner regarding security for refugees in Western Equatoria. Also, UNMISS agreed to deploy force protection personnel for road patrols and to facilitate the relocation of some 150 refugees from the fields around Ezo settlement to Makpandu camp in January. Before violence began in Western Equatoria in December 2015, Ezo was home to more than 3,200 Congolese refugees. Some 2,000 of them fled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. UNHCR in the Central African Republic reported that 1,450 people arrived in Bambouti, Prefecture du Haut-Mbomou,” from South Sudan.
Inter-agency assessment reveals destruction in Yambio - In December, UNHCR was part of an inter-agency mission to assess the magnitude of internal displacement in Yambio and determine the level of damages suffered by the population following the violence occurred from 7 to 10 December, including burning of houses and looting. The assessment team visited two areas, Nayure and Akorogbodi, hosting IDPs who fled from Ikpiro, Hai Tarawa, Asanza 1 and Asanza 2. According to the assessment, approximately 8,000 people remain in displaced in Yambio and nearly 200 houses were burnt down at Ikpiro and several hundred others were looted.
UNHCR joins a inter-agency mission to Leer - On 6 January, UNHCR Representative Ahmed Warsame undertook a field trip to Leer town and Thonyor, southern Unity State, together with the Humanitarian Coordinator, other UN Agencies and NGOs to review the humanitarian situation and response one month after humanitarian partners returned in the area in the first week of December. Food insecurity and malnutrition remain issues of major concern, with malnutrition rates nearly double the emergency threshold. UNHCR is looking into re-establishing an operational presence in Leer through the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Registration of Burundian asylum seekers continues - Since the escalation of violence in Burundi in September 2015, UNHCR registered and documented 384
Burundian asylum seekers in Juba.
OPERATIONAL CONTEXT
Yambio and its environs continued to suffer from a spate of security incidents, following the fighting erupted between government forces and local groups (known as the “Arrow Boys”) on 7 December 2015. On 30 December Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) soldiers were ambushed in Saura, 12 km south west of Yambio, and a military operation began there on 3 January 2016 between SPLA and armed youth. Armed skirmishes also occurred on the Nzara-Yambio road on 3 January rendering the road impassable. It is estimated that some 8,000 were displaced in Yambio County and another 7,000 in Tambura County.
On 7 January 2016, under the auspices of Festus Mogae the Chairman of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, the representatives of the Government of South Sudan, the Opposition, the Former Detainees’ Group and the Political Parties agreed on the allocation of ministerial portfolios: 16 for the ruling party in government, 10 for the SPLM-IO, two for the Former Detainees’ Group and another two for other political parties.
On 24 December, President Salva Kiir issued a Republican Decree appointing Governors to the 28 states, which came into effect that same day. The creation of additional 18 states in October 2015 was backed by the South Sudanese parliament in November.
The first SPLM-IO advance team of 150 members arrived in Juba from their headquarters in Upper Nile’s Pakag and Ethiopia’s Gambella, on 21 December 2015, led by the Opposition Chief Negotiator, Taban Deng Gai, and the Secretary General Dheui Mathok Wol. Additional 70 opposition representatives were deployed in the first week of January, with 300 others expected to arrive in the week of 11 January. The entire proposed advance team of 609 people is to be embedded in various parliamentary committees and working groups in Juba as well as in government institutions at state level as part of the implementation of different facets of the peace deal.
In mid-December, South Sudan devalued its currency by 84 per cent, increasing the exchange rate from SSP 2.96 per USD to SSP 18.5 per USD. The devaluation of the currency comes amidst the backdrop of significant hard currency shortages and may have a significant socio-economic impact for people at the bottom of the pyramid.
O 31 December 2015, FEWS NET published its December Food Security Outlook Update, highlighting the continuation of an acute food Emergency (IPC Phase 4) in central Unity State and the likelihood that it extends to parts of Jonglei and Upper Nile states worst affected by conflict between January and March 2016.