Building Resilience for South Sudanese Women through Humanitarian Assistance
Date:
Following a successful pilot in 2014, UN Women in South Sudan has scaled up the provision of humanitarian assistance to reach 6,000 vulnerable women and girls and 1500 men and boys in displaced settlements in Nimule, Eastern Equatorial State, Mingkaman in Lakes State and Juba in Central Equatoria State.
The interventions, which include support for livelihoods (income generation, vocational skills training, computer literacy and functional literacy), protection of women and girls against GBV and capacity-building of humanitarian actors in gender mainstreaming, are being funded by the Government of Japan.
Recently, UN Women and the Government of Japan donated materials worth US$ 92,000 to build resilience of displaced women and girls and their host communities in three payams (Nimule, Pageri and Mugali) within the Pageri Administrative Area, in South Sudan.
The Ambassador of Japan to South Sudan, H.E. Kiya Masahiko and the UN Women Director of Programmes, Ms Maria Noel Vaeza donated five multi-purpose grinding mills worth US$40,000, four units of one acre drip irrigation kits worth US$ 30,000 and four greenhouse kits worth US$22,000.
These modern machines and equipment will promote the year-round production of high-valued vegetables, reduce the workload of women and girls, and improve women’s access to resources and assets, including food and incomes, while enhancing their resilience and decision-making roles at the household and community levels.
The kits were provided as an addition to the US$ 350,000 disbursed through national NGOs for promoting micro enterprise development among IDP women and their host communities. The initiative seeks to promote both livelihoods (agricultural and non-agricultural) and enhance protection for IDP women and girls, and their host communities.
The overall value of the Japan funded project is USD 3.5 million which will be implemented over a two year period to support 1,500 households and benefiting 7,500 people in Juba County, Awerial County and Pageri Administrative Area.
The Ambassador of Japan commended UN Women for the work it is doing in South Sudan to ensure that women are empowered. He reiterated Japan’s continued support to the programme as well as in other areas.
“The key to peace is to support vulnerable women to become empowered economically and as leaders so that they can actively participate in peace building as well as in the development and Japan is committed to ensuring that women are empowered in all areas,” he said.
Ms Vaeza noted that the equipment donated will support wealth generation as well as reduce the labour the women have to put in to generate income.
“Investing in women makes economic sense as women have the capacity to transform livelihood support to sustainability,” she said.
The project aims to build resilience through promoting access to sustainable livelihoods opportunities including: vocational skills-training tailored to the job market; entrepreneurship skills development; facilitating market access; functional literacy and numeracy Programs; computer education opportunities; micro-finance services; value-additive processing and supporting the development of women focused community assets.
The Program will also promote peaceful co-existence among the internally displaced persons and the host communities through equitable access to program interventions.
Other important components are the gender-based violence (GBV) prevention interventions and providing technical and capacity building support to the Ministry of Gender and Humanitarian Affairs, to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment needs and rights are adequately and sustainably integrated into all future humanitarian response and recovery strategic plans.