South Sudan Appeal
Humanitarian Action for Children
UNICEF’s Humanitarian Action for Children appeal helps support the agency’s work as it provides conflict- and disaster-affected children with access to water, sanitation, nutrition, education, health and protection services. Return to main appeal page.
South Sudan snapshot
Appeal highlights
- In 2024, South Sudan faces profound humanitarian crises, compounded by the returnee and refugee influx from the Sudan conflict. Urgent assistance is needed for nine million people, including 4.9 million children, 2.2 million women, and 1.4 million individuals with disabilities.
- Conflict, insecurity, epidemic outbreaks, protracted flooding, heatwaves, and the destabilizing impact of the Sudan conflict on South Sudan's economy are rapidly exacerbating vulnerabilities, especially among children. South Sudan anticipates its inaugural election in December 2024.
- UNICEF’s humanitarian strategy prioritizes the most acute needs and complements development and resilience-building programmes. UNICEF works through community structures and partnerships with a focus on localized, adaptive responses, that strengthen local structures, systems and accountability to affected populations. Action is risk-informed and evidence-based and embraces climate adaptation, conflict-sensitive approaches and anticipatory action to mitigate the impact of disasters.
- UNICEF requires $252.5 million to meet children's basic needs, live-saving needs; a particular challenge given a 50 percent reduction in donor humanitarian contributions.
Key planned targets
720,000 people affected by health emergencies reached with primary health care services
397,292 children with severe wasting admitted for treatment
82,500 children/caregivers accessing community-based mental health and psychosocial support
700,000 people accessing a sufficient quantity and quality of water
Funding requirements for 2024
Country needs and strategy
Humanitarian needs
South Sudan will face a complex year in 2024, with growing humanitarian needs, hyperinflation and significant aid cuts. The political environment is fragile, with attention focused on fulfilling the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (2018),and hosting the country's first elections in December. Nine million people, including 4.9 million children will require humanitarian assistance, 15 per cent of whom have a disability.
Political instability, violence, widespread flooding, and disease outbreaks are compounding the complex, chronic needs of the most vulnerable people, especially children. Livelihoods are severely impacted and access to education, nutrition, water, sanitation and health services hampered. Children are at a high risk of abuse, violence, exploitation and psychosocial distress; and 2.8 million children (52 per cent girls) are out of school. Women and children are the most vulnerable to gender-based violence.
South Sudan is home to a displacement crisis with 2 million people internally displaced. Further, conflict in neighboring Sudan has exacerbated the situation. Since April 2023 to 27 March 2024, a total of 622,714 individuals (including 161,699 girls and 160,425 boys) crossed into South Sudan in immediate need of assistance and protection. Displacements have further strained existing services; 46 per cent of health facilities are moderately operational, and less than 10 per cent of the population have access to improved sanitation. These conditions increase the risk of disease outbreaks and record high rates of malnutrition. Upwards of 7 million people are expected to experience acute food insecurity.
Women and children on the move face serious deprivations and are exposed to major protection risks. Those arriving to South Sudan have endured long and often dangerous journeys. The arrivals into South Sudan are in urgent need of health services with alarming rates of malnutrition recorded, ranging from a proxy Global Acute Malnutrition rate between 17 - 27 per cent at border entry locations. Protection screening has identified many highly vulnerable cases, including unaccompanied and separated children, missing children, high levels of trauma, as well as reports of gender-based violence and abuse. To date, most people arriving demonstrate high levels of food insecurity, and do not have the ability to meet basic needs.
South Sudan is ranked the second most susceptible nation to the effects of natural hazards, including droughts, heatwaves and flooding. In 2023, 11.8 per cent of the child population was displaced due to flooding. In 2024, more than 60 per cent of the population is expected to be acutely food insecure, and 2 million lactating women and children under age 5 are expected to suffer from wasting.
UNICEF’s strategy
UNICEF will assist the most vulnerable women and children in the hardest-to-reach areas, aligned to the country’s Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan. Innovative, multi-sector approaches to assistance are expected to save lives, alleviate suffering, maintain dignity and protect children's rights. Priority will be given to programmes addressing the needs of children and women experiencing the most severe consequences of multiple vulnerabilities.
UNICEF will reinforce risk-informed approaches, promoting climate adaptation and strengthening the population’s resilience to shocks. At the same time, UNICEF will support vulnerable children and women, by focusing on addressing their needs based on underlying drivers of vulnerability and instability. Linkages between humanitarian, development and peace approaches will be enhanced by understanding the complex interrelatedness of compounding risks and by applying a critical conflict-sensitive lens to tailor interventions. A key focus, complementing the priority on acute needs, is to expand innovative, durable, community-led solutions that can reduce reliance on humanitarian assistance.
UNICEF’s risk-based preparedness promotes community-based anticipatory action to mitigate the impact of hazards and enable a timely, quality response. The organization will reinforce localization by strengthening local systems and capacities and expanding partnerships with local actors, prioritizing women-led organizations.
Services for protecting against sexual exploitation and abuse, and reducing gender-based violence, will be expanded in all interventions. Disability- and gender-sensitive approaches will ensure targeted responses meet the distinct needs of women, men, girls, boys, and persons with disabilities. Accountability to affected populations, prioritizing children, women, youth, and persons with disabilities, will be emphasized, enhancing feedback and participation.
WASH action will prioritize climate-resilient, safe water supply and sanitation services, focusing on disease and malnutrition reduction. Education initiatives will identify at-risk out-of-school children and provide formal/non-formal education in hard-to-reach areas. With a larger social work workforce, child protection interventions will offer tailored, specialized services for vulnerable children, youth, and adolescents, breaking cycles of violence and trauma, providing gender-based violence support and risk reduction, and mental health and psychosocial services. To reduce childhood mortality and morbidity, nutrition and health efforts will concentrate on child survival, scaling up life-saving treatment and prevention for severely wasted children and those at high risk of moderate wasting, outbreak response, malaria prevention, and immunization.
UNICEF’s strengthened field presence and monitoring, in partnership with civil society organizations and the Government, promotes quality, dynamic mobile responses that can adapt to rapidly changing needs. UNICEF is committed to strengthening coordination – with dedicated capacities – as lead agency of the WASH and Nutrition Clusters and the Child Protection Area of Responsibility, and as co-lead of the Education Cluster.
Programme targets
Find out more about UNICEF's work
Highlights
Humanitarian Action is at the core of UNICEF’s mandate to realize the rights of every child. This edition of Humanitarian Action for Children – UNICEF’s annual humanitarian fundraising appeal – describes the ongoing crises affecting children in South Sudan; the strategies that we are using to respond to these situations; and the donor support that is essential in this response.