HIGHLIGHTS
- Funds are urgently needed for top priority frontline projects, pipelines and prepositioning ahead of the rainy season.
- Food insecurity increases at a time that is traditionally more food insecure.
- A survey in Unity has found high levels of death.
- Partners respond to the needs of new arrivals in Bentiu town as the population grows.
FIGURES
- No. of Internally Displaced Persons: 1.69 million
- No. of refugees in neighbouring countries (post 15 Dec 2013): 658,372
- No. of severely food insecure people from Jan - Mar 2016: 2.8 million
Funds urgently needed to deliver vital supplies before the rainy season
Humanitarian partners urgently need about US$220 million to transport and preposition critical humanitarian supplies by the end of April 2016, before the rainy season begins.
More than 60 per cent of South Sudan is inaccessible by road during the rainy season. The dry season offers a critical window to preposition essential relief supplies, repair and improve infrastructure, and scale-up humanitarian assistance by road to previously hard-to-reach areas, including in southern Unity, parts of Upper Nile and Jonglei. About 150,000 metric tonnes of aid items need to be transported by road during the dry season, including food, seeds and tools, essential household items and emergency shelter for displaced families, and nutrition, health, education and water, sanitation and hygiene sup- plies.
If funding is not received immediately to enable supplies to be procured and moved during the dry season, humanitarian partners will be forced to resort to moving relief supplies by air during the rainy season, which is far more costly. Air transport costs up to six times more than delivery by road.
Partners have appealed for a total of US$1.3 billion to respond to the humanitarian needs of 5.1 million people across the country through the 2016 Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP). So far, the HRP is just 2 per cent funded at $27.9 million.
“I am deeply concerned that we are facing increasing needs with diminishing resources,” said Eugene Owusu, Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan. “Humanitarian partners are standing ready to respond, but they cannot do so without funding.”