Highlights
· WFP South Sudan celebrates International Women’s Day, supports the national pledge to end child marriage.
· WFP fleet trucks depart from South Sudan and Uganda to help boost uplift capacity out of Djibouti and Ethiopia.
In Numbers
1.69 million internally displaced people (OCHA estimates)
644,547 people displaced outside of South Sudan (UNHCR
estimates)
181,536 people seeking shelter with the UN (UNMISS estimates)
2.8 million people in emergency or crisis level food insecurity
(IPC, January to March 2016)
WFP’s Activities
On 08 March, WFP South Sudan celebrated International Women’s Day with a special address from Hakan Falkell (Deputy Country Director, Operations) who emphasized that women have a central role to fight hunger in South Sudan. Throughout the week, inspiring women WFP staff have made public service announcements in national radio stations to advocate for gender equality and girls’ education. In South Sudan, WFP strives to address the specific food and nutrition needs of men, women, boys and girls through gender-sensitive programming.
Clearances have been obtained from the Government of Ethiopia to allow for WFP fleet convoys to move commodities from Djibouti into Ethiopia. The commodities will then be airdropped from Ilyushins based in Gambella and Jimma. Already, 18 trucks from South Sudan and 12 trucks from Uganda have departed for Ethiopia. This will help ease the bottleneck in the supply chain; the lack of available trucking capacity in Ethiopia over the past few months have affected the pace of delivery of assistance.