Humanitarian Response

South Sudan is highly vulnerable to flooding, food shortages, outbreaks of disease and internal conflict that regularly forces children and their families from their homes. We respond to the needs of children affected by these emergencies by supporting education and child protection activities, and providing emergency relief items.

We implement emergency response programmes wherever there is a need, but have a special focus on assisting in Jonglei, Upper Nile, Northern Bahr el Ghazal and Lakes states.

At the end of 2013, South Sudan descended back into internal conflict displacing almost half a million people. Save the Children has been responding to this crisis by providing child protection services to displaced people in Juba, Lakes state and Eastern Equatoria state. This work will be scaled up to reach other areas, and to include nutrition and education activities as soon as security allows.

Since 2012 we have been working with refugees in camps in Upper Nile state, providing children with access to primary education, early childhood development activities and accelerated learning programmes. We also run child protection programmes including the establishment of child friendly spaces and community-based child protection mechanisms, and help to reunite children separated from their families as a result of conflict.

In Jonglei state, an area that continues to be ravaged by inter-communal violence, we are working to identify children who have been separated from their parents by conflict and to reunite them with their families, have set up child friendly spaces, established community-based child protection networks and provide training on child rights to community leaders, armed forces personnel and the police.

To ensure that communities affected by humanitarian crises are able to access timely emergency support we preposition non-food items including shelter kits in areas that are vulnerable to conflict or natural disasters.

We also train partners and local government representatives in Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Preparedness and Response, conducts assessments for high-risk communities, conducts Post Distribution Monitoring, and participates in UN-led emergency assessments in high-risk areas.