JUBA - As South Sudan marks 10 years of independence, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) reaffirm their strategic partnership to improve the lives of millions of South Sudanese and support their aspirations for a better future.
Years of conflict, displacement, and environmental shocks have led to chronic hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and the loss of many lives in the world's youngest country. WFP's partnership with USAID continues to combat these stressors and helps establish the peace and stability that is key for the success of the nation and its people.
WFP's efforts to mitigate the short-term effects of severe food insecurity includes delivering 300,000 metric tons of food assistance annually to more than five million people in South Sudan. Food rations and nutritional supplements are provided for the treatment and prevention of malnutrition.
While emergency food assistance is instrumental to turn the tide on hunger, eliminating the root-cause of famine requires longer term and more complex interventions: strengthening education, nutrition, livelihood resilience, and economic empowerment.
"To help vulnerable people thrive, WFP goes beyond emergency food assistance," said Matthew Hollingworth, Representative and Country Director of WFP in South Sudan. "We are expanding our livelihoods activities to enable families to increase their income, bring communities up to speed on the latest agronomical practices, build people's resilience to climatic shocks, and to enable food production at scale for a more food secure South Sudan. WFP counts on the steady support of our donors to help us sustain the momentum we have built so far."
WFP's school meals programme, which benefits more than half a million school children across all 10 states, is an investment in the future. This initiative feeds South Sudan's young children with the aim of helping them to grow up to become self-reliant in a peaceful and more hopeful future.
WFP's livelihoods programme continues to be a great success, benefiting more than 730,000 people by allowing them to enhance their food production, store their crops more efficiently, and gain business expertise when selling surplus in local markets. Maintaining and growing these programmes requires the fortitude of generous donors to continue helping the farmers of South Sudan, especially as the lean season peaks this month in July and August.
Coupled with continued assistance, humanitarian interventions that create economic opportunities, such as those delivered by WFP and its partner USAID, will enable the South Sudanese people to build these pillars of long-term peace and prosperity.
"USAID deeply values its strong partnership with WFP in South Sudan and the vital assistance that partnership has been able to bring to millions of South Sudanese people over the last decade," said McDonald Homer, USAID/South Sudan Acting Mission Director McDonald Homer.
The United States has provided WFP with over US$3.1 billion in humanitarian funds since South Sudan was founded in 2011.
