South Sudan: Response scale-up for highly food insecure areas - Situation Report No. 5 (As of 31 March 2021)

HIGHLIGHTS

• General food assistance and Food-for-Asset caseloads are planned to increase from 348,500 in March to over 473,000 people in April in the six priority 1 counties.

• Between 16 and 31 March, 4,870 children under five years and 2,892 pregnant and lactating women were reached with nutritional assistance through 96 static nutritional facilities, 28 outreach sites and 12 stabilization centres in the six priority 1 counties.

• Health Cluster partners provided more than 28,000 consultations to people and continued to expand access to health services through the re-establishment of critical static primary health care and mobile service delivery.

• Over 75,600 people have been reached with WASH services in the six priority 1 counties.

• Over 11,000 people were supported through Gender-Based Violence (GBV) programming in the reporting period.

• A total of 8,160 people were reached with Child Protection (CP) services during the reporting period.

• The pre-positioning of critical humanitarian supplies in hard-to-reach locations ahead of the rainy season continues.

SITUATION OVERVIEW

People in parts of South Sudan continue to face the highest levels of food insecurity since the country declared independence 10 years ago. For many, their situation has deteriorated as a result of compounding shocks, including flooding, ongoing violence and displacement, the impact of which has eroded the livelihoods and coping strategies of vulnerable communities across the country. According to Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) projections, from December to March 2021, an estimated 5.8 million people (48 per cent of the population) faced Crisis levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 3) or worse - a figure that is expected to increase to 7.2 million (60 per cent of the population) in the upcoming lean season of April-July 2021. In the six priority 1 locations, 810,000 people are deemed to be in Crisis or worse levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 3+) according to IPC projections. This includes over 300,000 children suffering from Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and some 480,000 pregnant and lactating women who are acutely malnourished and in need of treatment.

Humanitarian organizations continue to scale-up operations across South Sudan, intensifying efforts for people in six priority 1 counties. Based on food security and nutrition analysis, these six counties were identified in late 2020 as priority 1 areas for a multi-sectoral response scale-up, including Food Security and Livelihoods assistance, health and nutritional support, protection services and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) assistance, supported by the Logistic Cluster and UNHAS.