Highlights:
The recent intensification of conflict has continued to take a heavy toll on children with a total of 161 incidents of grave child rights violations reported this year, 84 of which have been reported from Unity State in May alone. This includes the verified killing of 95 children and unverified reports of large scale use of children by the all sides to the conflict. Unverified reports of similar grave child rights violations have been reported in Upper Nile State.
There are eight suspected and one confirmed cholera case in Juba, seven of which are in Juba Protection of Civilians (PoC) site. UNICEF, WHO and Cluster and implementing partners are working to increase prevention and response interventions.
The latest Interagency Phase Classification (IPC) results were released on 27 May, with nearly 248,000 children estimated to be suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Child malnutrition rates remain above the emergency threshold of 15 per cent in both conflict-affected and high-burden states of Greater Upper Nile, Warrap and Northern Bahr el Ghazal. So far this year, UNICEF and partners have treated over 50,000 children with SAM.
The final state launch of the Back to Learning initiative was held in Western Equatoria on 3 June. Under Back to Learning, UNICEF and partners have reached 103,000 children with learning programmes in 2015.