Radio Miraya
2808: DanChurchAid: Addressing Humanitarian Needs for Displaced People in South Sudan Through the Support of the EU
looking at the conflict in Sudan that has displaced millions of people. More than 7 million people to be precise have been internally displaced and 2 million others have fled to neighboring countries. South Sudan has received over 700,000 returnees and refugees. Displaced people arriving in the country need help, food, medicine, selta and protection. The European Union is offering humanitarian assistance to people who are affected by displacement through the DUNCHERGE aid. DUNCHERGE aid and its partners that include Niallhope, Christian aid, Unidor and African Development aid offers a range of humanitarian services that seek to alleviate the suffering of those in need. Now to talk about this response, here with me in the studio joining us, I'm glad to have Rick Christiansen who is from DUNCHERGE aid, grants and program development office at Christiansen. Welcome, good morning and it's good to have you here on the Mirabe breakfast show. Good morning and thank you so much for hosting us today. It's a pleasure being here this morning. Thank you for joining us. We also have Rahab Wanja, Karanja who is from Niallhope's project lead and food security and livelihood specialist. Thank you Rahab Wanja for joining us. Good morning to you. Good morning to you and thank you for having us. It's a pleasure being part of this. Good work in South Sudan. Thank you. Thank you and yes, as I said there in my intro quite devastating of course the situation in Sudan that has displaced quite a number of people. Rick, just help us understand the range of services that are supported by this response to the need of the displaced community. Yeah, thank you so much. So today we're going to talk a bit about one of our critical projects that we are currently in implementing with our partners with the with funding from DG Echo. So earlier this year we started our activities in five different counties. It's Pivor, Fashoula, Ulang, Ayod and Lea. And here we are focusing on two key focus areas. So as you said just before, I think a lot of the listeners also know that South Sudan are right now facing a severe humanitarian crisis which is also centered upon food insecurity and as you said protection issues. We have climate change impacts that are further worsening this situation. So in this project we are focusing on providing cash assistance to the most vulnerable families in these communities. We do so to make the families and the household able to purchase basic essential items. It can be food, it can be medicine, clothing. But this we do to directly address the, yeah, especially the severe food insecurity and economic instability which many are facing these days. And how does this work? These cash assistance, do you give them monthly? Do you give them in a period of three months? How do you explain more for us? Okay, how we give the cash? It is given in three installments because the project is a 10 month project and it was informed also by an assessment of the local markets and the needs in those counties that she mentioned. So we give it in three installments that allows the families to access their basic needs, yeah. And just help us understand the challenges that of course this displaced people face in South Sudan. When they arrive here they are still at the risk of such problems like violence and food shortages. Can you describe the situation that you have witnessed? Oh yeah, when they arrive as you mentioned we have of course the returnees from Sudan but we also have our issues here in South Sudan as you understand we everybody know we are ranked high and the needs are affecting the people looking at the figures around 9.5 million people in need of the humanitarian need. So when they return they find back home people also who have their vulnerabilities they are not able to host them then they expose them to immense pressure and that is where us as the humanitarian workers come in to support them address these needs and when we thought of cash because cash allows them to buy food and for those who need resettlement they can do temporary shelters they can buy food medicine whatever it is their life saving need that they need to help them have an easy time when settling in because if you give them if you decide for them then you've denied them the choice to address their life saving need but they are facing so we give them a choice and also trying to restore their dignity. Now with the humanitarian situation of course in the country which you just made and described and also the economic situation that things are changing every day in terms of prizes and food commodities and all that. How much money do you give these people? Okay as I mentioned earlier it was informed by an assessment according to the humanitarian assessment and the money we give them is scattering for the household food basket it's informed by an assessment and it is different because of course the budgeting is in dollars but at the time of distribution of the cash we distribute in the local currency so every time we are giving the support they get a different amount so it changes according to the market but you also realize there under as you said other issues economic issues in the country that is why we are glad that we are able to plan in the hard currency and then during implementation it helps us to cushion some of these challenges all right that are causing issues in their markets. Thank you. Now Ricky help me pronounce that name please once again. So it's a Danish name very traditional old school one so in Danish you say Rege but I usually also introduce myself as Rege here because that seems to be a little bit easy. All right thank you so yes as we had from Rahab over 9 million people are in their need to of humanitarian assistance and then in need of help and this particular project that you are implementing right now which areas are being covered by this project. So as I said before we are covering sorry five different countries and four different states so the state on state level it's up on Nile greater people administrative area, unity state and also jungling and so that's along for shorter people layer and yod so it's a quite big geographical coverage. Yeah and maybe to tie in with what Rahab said before so the distributions like the assistance of cash is also geographically determined so that means that we are actually also distributing different amounts depending on the on this assessment that what Rahab just explained. Yes and and of course with this huge influx of people coming into south so that we understand up to 2 000 people continue to come to the country daily. How are you coping with this increasing demands? So I think we we now more than yeah well over a year since the crisis from started in in south Sudan imagine that the people that are coming in here are the ones who are very very vulnerable they are the ones who hadn't or didn't have the possibility or maybe the financial resources to flee in the first in the first period of the crisis so they are coming into south Sudan with with Gab with barely anything and as Rahab just mentioned before our project is is targeting them but obviously also the host communities as we call them so those south Sudanese so a lot of the returnees from from the Sudan crisis are south Sudanese but they are coming home to a south Sudan that looks very different from from when they they left exactly so we are we are supporting with the with the cash assistance to to to help them cover the basic needs whether that is yeah close medicine food that is completely up to them it might differ from family to family or individual to individual and so we are giving the decision power to to the individuals on how to utilize the money and Rahab how do you map the priority seeing that the needs are competing and quite critical how we map the priorities because the the project is informed from needs assessment that we do from the ground because we realize as you are saying the needs are very many and it is very hard to really target but we have a very well detailed vulnerability criteria that guides us on how we are going to target at the ground but of course it's good to acknowledge that the one of the biggest challenges we are facing is that needs are growing every day and the resources are limited because we have other competing priorities in south Sudan also and globally and the the humanitarian aid is not only focusing on the issues in south Sudan or Sudan so we we would say we are doing a quite a good job but there are many other things that need the attention of the humanitarian the humanitarian community yeah yeah now as a done church aid you you speak of strong collaborations across actors how is working with local organizations made you work a little effective so in DC aid and church aid we we implement all of our activities except for our humanitarian mind actions through our local partners and for example Nailahou is a is a long-term partner we have a very good strategic partnership together and it obviously makes us sure that the the programs and the projects that we are developing are developed with them and with the local communities where the projects are envisioned to be implemented to make sure that we are tailoring our activities to the actual needs on the ground so I think that's a very efficient and sustainable way of creating partnerships and we have done a lot of good good implementation in in the years and with this eco-funded project it's just another milestone if you can say that in in the partnership between DC aid and Nailahou open the rest of the consortium all right let's talk briefly about or focus briefly on the challenges of you know gender-based violence among those who are vulnerable of course they are already vulnerable that even exposes them more to situations of gender-based violence among these people tell us a bit about how this project actually responds to issues of gender-based violence okay thank you for asking that is also other than the component of cash which is addressing the food insecurity and access to basic needs we also have a component of protection for women and girls exposed to gender-based violence and also other issues as you know the counties that I mentioned we have also other many other issues inter conflict commune or conflict crime conflict that affects the women so we have we are doing psychosocial support and case management which also is a big component of this to complement our other job because other than the food insecurity we also have the really issue of protection affecting the host and also the people returning from Sudan and also they internally displaced within South Sudan yes all right and going forward how can all these groups be supported beyond this emergency state because one raccoons that are one point or at some point they may want to be settled and just you know have a sustainable livelihoods yeah this is a this project is one of the component of the emergency response we are doing but we also have development of projects that we are implementing with DC and also other partners to address their longer term solutions so this one is immediately to help them settle in and also to alleviate the suffering but you also have other components of livelihood market support income generating activities and and they also support to food production that we are doing in other projects that will also help them after we address the emergency to move them to the next level where they are self reliant all right now vague your final words when I come to support that Dan Church aid has offered through this project that is also part of this project of the European Union on civil protection and humanitarian aid what has done it being offering to this project yeah I think it just echoing what what Rahab have just said that it is for this specific project it is focused on like the humanitarian needs the basic needs and and securing protection for women and girls who have been subjected to to gender based violence through a range of different services that are provided on site and in the different five locations and I think in these challenges times every action counts and we speaking as DCA and I'll hope and the rest of consortium are very committed to to do everything we can to support the people of South Sudan but we can't do it alone you know so we need to continue to support from from the international community and from the donors of course and the local partners here because together we can make a difference and we can help build a brighter future for South Sudan thank you and Rahab your final remarks and the priorities for these displaced people I think the priority now as the figures are saying is ensuring they are safe and also their basic needs are met and also thinking of a long term plan of how they'll be easily settled in in their in their locations and also ensuring that the work we are doing also is empowering the host community because at the end of the day we want to see a more sustainable South Sudan and we acknowledge also the effort as and other humanitarian workers are doing to make sure that we get a bright future for this country and we want to thank EKODG for the support they have given us at this critical time and we look forward also to continue supporting the community in those areas and other areas that we work all right Rahab and WK Christensen thank you so much for coming to Mira's students we do appreciate your time