UN gets $6.8m to help South Sudan refugees

The UN Refugee Agency on Wednesday said it has received $6.8m to assist refugees in South Sudan’s Unity and Upper Nile states.

UNHCR’s Representative in South Sudan, Cosmas Chanda, reiterated the agency’s concern about the welfare of refugees in conflict-affected areas, saying refugees were almost entirely dependent on external aid for their survival.

“They lost everything. They were forced to abandon their homes, infirm relatives, livestock, granaries and farmland,” he said in a statement received in Nairobi.

Chanda said the UNHCR and other partners have since 2013 adopted post-emergency sustainable programming approaches, including upgrading emergency structures to semi-permanent ones across all sectors.

According to UNHCR, Unity and Upper Nile states are the worst affected by ongoing conflict and internal displacement.

The UN had warned that if the conflict continues, half of South Sudan’s 12 million people would either be displaced internally, refugees abroad, starving or dead by the year’s end.

The conflict has also displaced over a million people, including over 80,000 people who were sheltering at UN bases around the country.

The UN would be launching a massive operation to help 3.2 million people after the donor conference on South Sudan to be hosted by Norway and UN on May 20.

According to the statement, the humanitarian community is $781m short of the $1.27bn that UN estimates is needed by the middle of this year.