Finnish Refugee Council (FRC) is providing cash assistance, financial literacy training, and Gender-based-violence (GBV) protection to vulnerable returnees and local communities in Jonglei State, South Sudan, bordering Ethiopia. The project started in the spring of 2024, it is implemented in cooperation with a national NGO, Nile Hope, and aims to support some 9,000 individuals over the course of one year.
South Sudan, located in the Greater Horn of Africa region, East Africa, has a population totalling 12.4 million; especially women and children experience high levels of violence, exploitation and abuse. Conflict, food insecurity, climate extremes – floods and drought – have pushed people into inhumane living conditions. The 2.2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) represent the world’s fourth most neglected displacement crisis; at the same time, South Sudan struggles with Africa’s largest refugee crisis, with over 2 million South Sudanese refugees hosted in neighbouring countries. Besides, with the Sudan crisis following the civil conflict started in April 2023 and a combination of violence and the cessation of food distribution in parts of Ethiopia, hundreds of thousands of people returned to South Sudan, many of whom highly vulnerable and arriving in dramatically underdeveloped areas.
“People returning to their areas of origin have already lost their homes, and assets. Likewise, they have no food, and their previous social ties have been severed. These challenges in addition to the general insecurity are compounded by various diseases and the local government’s inability to provide essential services,” says Francis Eswap, FRC’s Country Director for operations in South Sudan.
To support South Sudanese returnees, FRC launched a project to provide cash assistance and financial literacy training to hundreds of affected households. The cash assistance provides the returnees the means to meet their basic needs such as food, shelter and hygiene to ensure their survival; by attending financial literacy trainings participants will acquire basic numeracy skills to better handle the cash distributed and their finances. In South Sudan only 34.5% of the adult population is literate.
“Through FRC interventions the returnees have something to start with. In addition to cash and tangible skills people’s capacities are strengthened, and they can participate more in the community life. All this has a direct impact on equality and social cohesion,” Francis explains.
The project is also expected to enhance prevention, mitigation of, and response to GBV amongst women and girls at risk by referring the survivors of violence to support services, training local community members to raise awareness on and disseminate information about gender-based violence and to bring girls and women into the intervention as well as engaging men and boys as emphasized by Francis:
“Unfortunately, in many cultures women are not treated equally and men are most often the perpetrators of violence. We need to involve men and boys to increase the protection of women and girls and to prevent the violence they face.
Working with local people and local organizations is central to FRC’s work. Returnees’ and local people’s voices need to be heard for a real change to take place.
” FRC’s mission is to work for human rights and to support people’s empowerment. We work together with everyone, and no one is left behind,” Francis sums up.
Finnish Refugee Council’s work in South Sudan is funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. The project will run until the end of April 2025.
More information about our work in South Sudan:
Francis Eswap, Country Director
francis.eswap@refugeecoincil.fi,
+211 922 03 47 01
+211 912 32 72 38