South Sudan: Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2025 (December 2024)

Crisis overview

Over a decade after independence and six years after the signing of the revitalized peace agreement, people in South Sudan continue to face critical humanitarian conditions. The humanitarian crisis has persisted due to a combination of sporadic armed clashes and intercommunal violence, food insecurity, public health challenges and climatic shocks. These factors have severely affected people’s livelihoods and hampered access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), education and health services. In 2024, the economic crisis, the conflict in neighbouring Sudan and widespread flooding deepened people’s needs. Protection concerns remain high, especially for women and girls.

Climate variability

South Sudan ranks as the second most vulnerable country to natural hazards in the world, according to the 2024 INFORM1 Risk Index. South Sudan continues to experience extreme climate shocks such as floods, droughts and heat stresses that occur multiple times, giving communities no time to recover. The cumulative effects of climate change create a situation of perennial vulnerability of communities, wiping out local adaptive response mechanisms.

In 2024, heavy rains and the release of water from a historically full Lake Victoria in Uganda increased the levels of the Nile River – causing floods and affecting up to 1.4 million people as of mid-November 2024. These include communities who have yet to recover from the devastating floods between 2019 and 2022, which affected more than 1 million people each year. The prolonged flooding rendered basic needs such as food, clean water and health care difficult to access and contributed to the near collapse of local livelihoods. The areas most affected by the current floods are those already facing high levels of vulnerability due to previous flooding, conflict and the impact of the Sudan crisis.

According to the IGAD Climate Prediction and Application Centre East Africa Drought Watch of July 2024, drought silently affected all 10 states of South Sudan at varying extents – with its impacts unnoticed due to those of flooding. Nearly 36 per cent of the population is affected by different categories and impacts of drought-like situations, including induced displacements, which are forecasted to be much higher in 2025 due to the residual effects of El Niño. This is likely to cause more crop failure and food insecurity, with the need for more humanitarian support.

In March 2024, South Sudan experienced abnormally hot climate-induced weather conditions with temperatures reaching 45° C – above the normal average2 between 25° C and 35° C. The prolonged period of heatwaves increased the risk of human-related illnesses, particularly among children, the elderly and adults with underlying conditions, and affected socioeconomic conditions and people’s access to services.

Conflict

Conflict and insecurity continue to be significant drivers of people’s needs. Incidents of violence attributed to conventional parties to the conflict remained relatively low due to general compliance with the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan. However, entrenched patterns of violence involving armed youth, such as cattle raiding, border disputes and retaliatory attacks, are predominant drivers of violence.

Climate shocks affect different parts of the country at varying intensities, leading to multiple intercommunal conflicts at sub-national levels, including farmer-herder conflicts, cattle raids, land disputes and disputes over resources such as water. Flooding normally coincides with the cropping season in many parts of South Sudan or harvesting periods in places of early cropping, exacerbating food and nutrition insecurity. In several parts of the country, tensions between conflicting communities over access to resources and revenge have culminated into violent clashes and triggered serious human rights violations, including widespread sexual violence, particularly against women and girls.

During the second quarter of 2024, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan documented 1,062 victims of intercommunal and political violence, representing a 43 per cent increase in the number of incidents documented in the same period in 2023. According to the report, intercommunal violence involving community-based militias and/or civil defense groups, including crossborder conflicts, constituted the primary source of violence affecting civilians in South Sudan – accounting for 83 per cent of documented victims. Localized violence, exacerbated by long-standing cultural practices and communal tensions over access to natural resources, continues to be the major source of insecurity, posing access challenges for humanitarian operations and triggering population displacement across South Sudan.

Sudan crisis

Since the conflict erupted between the Government of Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan on 15 April 2023, over 901,000 people have been recorded crossing into South Sudan as beginning of December 2024 – with an additional 337,000 people expected to arrive in 2025. People fleeing Sudan face extreme protection risks along treacherous routes to South Sudan, with many – especially women and girls – exposed to violence and gender-based abuse and arriving in poor physical and psychological conditions.
Urgent life-saving assistance remains critical, including food, nutrition, shelter and WASH services, health and vulnerability screening, vaccinations for children, and mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS).

The sheer volume of arrivals is overwhelming South Sudan’s limited infrastructure, particularly in border areas where congestion in transit centres heightens protection, gender-based violence (GBV) and health risks. Transportation constraints and the strained capacity of host communities underscore the need for increased support to move people quickly to safer locations.

For those who reach their destinations, reintegration poses severe challenges. Returnees face crippling food insecurity in communities already affected by floods and economic hardships. Access to health care and education is vastly limited, compounded by the scarcity of facilities, personnel and supplies. Many returnees lack civil documentation, affecting their access to basic rights and services. Land ownership and eviction issues further complicate access to secure, affordable housing, with prohibitive land costs making stability a distant goal.

The Sudan crisis compounds South Sudan’s humanitarian emergency, demanding an urgent expansion of response capacities. Returnees are arriving in areas already grappling with service deficits and strained community resilience. Meanwhile, the conflict has destabilized markets in border states, causing prices of food and essential commodities to skyrocket, and heightening risks of secondary displacement to collective sites and urban centres. Onward movements from border points to transit centres and final destinations remain vital. Transit centres require immediate expansion and maintenance to accommodate and provide safe places for new arrivals. In high-return areas, a major scale-up of services is critical, especially for health care and education, to support host communities already absorbing internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnees. To prevent prolonged dependency on humanitarian aid, enhanced livelihood programmes and addressing housing, land and property (HLP) issues are essential to help returnees achieve self-sufficiency upon arrival.

Disease outbreak

South Sudan is home to multiple public health crises, exacerbated by limited immunization coverage, disruptions in vaccination services, widespread population displacement, influx of displaced people from Sudan and poor household nutrition. Inadequate access to safe drinking water and sanitation and natural disasters such as floods increase the vulnerabilities of communities, posing additional challenges to public health emergencies. South Sudan faces significant gaps in timely detection, reporting, investigation and response to disease outbreaks. The public health system is fragile and dependent on humanitarian aid. The Government’s funding for health remains significantly low at 2 per cent of the national budget.

People in South Sudan continue to experience diseases, with people in some areas enduring multiple outbreaks simultaneously. With cholera being the most recent outbreak, this intensifies the burden on communities and the health system. There are 19 of 20 neglected tropical diseases in South Sudan, highlighting the health service challenges in the country. It is estimated4 that only 44 per cent of the population live within reach of health facilities with consistent access to primary care services. The available health facilities are poorly equipped and staffed.

Vaccine-preventable disease burden looms large due to limited coverage in immunization programmes, with many children and adults vulnerable to diseases including measles, yellow fever and poliovirus. Years of flooding continue to drive the upsurge of endemic diseases such as malaria, with the peak season extending from July to December. Malaria remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality nationwide, accounting for 47 per cent of overall morbidity. Since January 2024, 2.7 million suspected cases of malaria and 1,800 suspected malaria related deaths have been recorded.