Unicef alert: Funds run out for support of 100,000 South Sudanese children

The funds available to respond to the multiple and critical needs of children, representing more than 60 percent of the South Sudanese refugees in Sudan, are running out this month.

There are already critical gaps in the provision of lifesaving services to unaccompanied children, including water and sanitation, hygiene-education, treatment of malnutrition, and immunisation, Unicef reported in a press release on Tuesday.

The funding received covers only 16 percent of the $117 million required. By the end of June, Unicef will no longer have funding available to support minors affected by the war in South Sudan

The needs are only increasing. Apart from the recent influx of thousands of new refugees to Sudan, after heavy fighting resumed in northern parts of South Sudan, the approaching rainy season may expose the children and their families to even worse living conditions.

“Children are the main victims of the intensification of conflict in South Sudan. They have suffered from exposure to a brutal war, which has uprooted them from their homes and separated them from their familiar environment. We cannot make these boys and girls suffer even more by failing to provide timely, quality, and to scale-up humanitarian assistance and protection,” Unicef Representative Geert Cappelaere said.

UN children’s agency urges the Sudanese authorities and governmental and non-governmental partners, to “guarantee an enabling environment for reaching and assisting all those children most in need, in a timely manner, with sufficient and quality services”.

Unicef also calls on the international community to “urgently step up its funding to help us in providing protection, education, and a healthy life for the most vulnerable boys and girls”.

In coordination with its implementing partners and UNHCR, Unicef has been responding to the humanitarian needs of children affected by the war in South Sudan since December 2013.

“The acute needs of children in Sudan are huge and go far beyond the impact of the South Sudan crisis. More than 3.2 million children require humanitarian assistance,” the press release reads.