More than 50% of people in South Sudan do not have access to safe drinking water and even the available water facilities are not all functional. Between 30 and 50% of water facilities in the country are non-functioning.

To address this challenge, the Netherlands constructs and rehabilitates hand pumps (boreholes), small water distribution systems, springs and wells, mainly in rural areas. This is accompanied by the formation and training of water management committees for each water point provided, which are responsible for the day-to-day management of the water facilities.

Access to sustainable safe drinking water is a major challenge for communities, particularly in rural South Sudan, which are regularly forced to depend on unsafe water from streams, rivers and pools for drinking. Even the lucky ones with boreholes in the area sometimes have to walk long distances to fetch water for the household, which can often take all day. The worst affected are women and girls who are traditionally responsible for fetching water for their households. This has limited the ability of women to take part in other economic activities and reduced the chances of girls attending school.

The Netherlands’ support is aimed at not only providing safe drinking water facilities but also ensuring that the water facilities provided remain functional. This involves active community participation, ownership and financial contribution. In 2019, more than 609 community institutions were strengthened and 73 village loan and saving associations were formed, trained and strengthened to provide a financial base for contributing to a sustainable water supply.

Community Based Organisations were the main implementers in both regions in which Dutch support is active and this collaboration proved vital, as many of these organisations recruited local staff who understand local customs and cultural practices, and were instrumental in passing on appropriate behaviour change messages in relation to community ownership and financial support for the operation and maintenance of water facilities. This led to a quick uptake of the sustainability approach advanced through the Netherlands support.

An estimated 90% of South Sudanese people do not have access to improved sanitation facilities and, as a result, 61% practice open defecation. In 2019, addressing issues related to sanitation was an increasing challenge due to the fact that sanitation became a secondary priority for many communities. Most people struggled to meet their immediate basic needs, such as food, water and shelter. This made it difficult to achieve the desired results.

Access to sanitation in South Sudan continues to lag behind due to a combination of the ongoing conflict, poor cultural practices and strong incidence of poverty in communities.

The Netherlands has been actively supporting communities in constructing their latrines using local materials. This has two advantages. Firstly, this approach is much more sustainable, as communities do not have to import materials for constructing their latrines. Secondly, it reduces aid dependency and has a positive long-term impact on sanitation service delivery in South Sudan.

In a context such as South Sudan, however, asking communities to construct their own latrines is quite a challenging and time-consuming exercise, as it requires long-term community sensitisation, capacity building and rigorous monitoring to achieve results. The high incidence of poverty among the local populations has also made it difficult for communities to prioritise sanitation, as they struggle to find safe drinking water, food and shelter.

Sustainable access to water, sanitation and hygiene services has been a chronic problem in South Sudan, partly due to the weak institutional capacity to manage the services that have been provided. This means that most water facilities are not properly managed, leading to frequent breakdowns and lack of funds to make repairs.

The Netherlands focused its safe water supply activity on not only providing hand pumps and water distribution systems but also on supporting community-level institutional structures in managing the water facilities provided by the projects.

In South Sudan, where between 30 and 50% of all water facilities are non-functional, strengthening institutional capacity to manage these water facilities is critical. Non-functionality is a consequence of multiple challenges, ranging from weak government institutions, as a result of civil conflict in the country, to poor community capacity to take charge of the basic management of water facilities.

The Netherlands’ support to safe water supply is accompanied by capacity building of community-level institutions, commonly known as water management committees. This aimed to build bottom-up capacity for sustainable water services management. The water management committees are responsible for the day-to-day management of water facilities, including the collection, management and proper utilisation of funds to maintain the water facilities.

As a result, the number of boreholes repaired within three weeks has increased from 56% before the start of Dutch interventions to 93% in project areas. Women are now able to actively take part in other economic activities and girls can attend school, as they do not need to spend hours finding and fetching water.

As mentioned above, the food security situation in South Sudan has worsened due to the conflict and the country has a high malnutrition rate. The ELRP project therefore specifically focuses on improving access to healthy diverse food, including the provision of vouchers for nutritious food like fish, milk and vegetables; the establishment of kitchen gardens; and offering nutrition education on various topics (e.g. cooking techniques, construction of solar dryers, food processing and preservation, gardening techniques and good fish production practices).

Based on the results achieved, the ELRP project was able to support the most vulnerable group of women and children with access to and the availability of nutritious foods. The project also helped to educate women on the importance of a healthy diet by introducing kitchen gardens and providing vegetable seeds. Local markets were stimulated through the voucher schemes, which increased trade and therefore the income of traders.

It has also been widely acknowledged that projects such as ELRP are the bridging the gap between humanitarian assistance and development. Through this project, the beneficiaries were able to restart and improve their livelihoods by producing their own food, through the provision of seeds and tools. Beneficiaries were also provided with technical support on good agriculture practices to enhance their knowledge.

The Netherlands will continue to support the ELRP project in 2020, considering the satisfactory results achieved.

In South Sudan, one of the main factors hindering agriculture sector development is access to quality seeds. The projects mentioned below provided vulnerable groups with adapted rapid response kits, comprising quick maturing seeds, agricultural hand tools and fishing kits, enabling households to produce food for their own consumption. They also provide technical support on general agricultural practices, in order to enhance farmers’ productivity and increase production.

As mentioned above, it has been critical for farmers to access quality seeds to increase production. Through the Netherlands’ interventions, this was achieved with 23,444 family farms gaining improved access to inputs. In addition, the SSD4SS project was able to support the private sector in producing and selling seeds directly to farmers.

Through the provision of seeds along with technical support, farmers were able to increase production for their own consumption as well as increase income. The projects performed well based on the overall planning and targets.

79% of the beneficiaries reported that law enforcement and judicial services are providing effective/fair treatment to Gender-Based Violence (GBV) survivors.

Good results were achieved, despite rampant abuse of women's rights and GBV in South Sudan.

Through this project, implemented by Nonviolent Peaceforce, the Netherlands supports direct protection, raising awareness for behavioral change and GBV topics, capacity building of community-based protection mechanisms and co-ordination and advocacy at local and national level.

A combination of activities contribute to providing an environment that is free from everyday violence, where the rights of women and girls are respected, and their participation and decision making on peace building, protection and security issues is promoted.

Key achievements under this programme include 36,932 beneficiaries being reached through awareness-raising activities on behavioural change and GBV topics. Accompaniment and referrals for support after incidents assisted 520 beneficiaries. A total of 2,637 men and boys and 4,841 women and girls were supported through training and capacity building activities on advocacy, communication and co-ordination on GBV-related issues.

Under the UNDP/Access to Justice and Rule of Law programme, almost 4,000 beneficiaries gained access to justice, including 1,762 female beneficiaries presenting cases of sexual violence or domestic abuse to courts and other judicial service providers.

The Access to Justice and Rule of Law (A2J/RoL) project operates in a conflict context and in a new state with non-functional institutions. Through UNDP, the Netherlands supports the capacity building and mechanisms of rule of law institutions. In addition, the Netherlands supports the increased demand for access to justice at community level, through rights-based interventions such as the establishment of a GBV and Juvenile court.

Despite the fragility of the country, the results achieved are encouraging, as they exceed the target set. Key achievements were increased access to justice through legal aid provision, including legal advice, legal consultations and legal representation before courts. Working through Justice and Confidence Centres (JCCs), public legal awareness was raised and community outreach took place at grassroots level by disseminating tailored legal information, resulting in increased uptake of legal services by citizens.

Legal bills were drafted, legislative reviews took place and a constitutional litigation manual was drafted. The latter serves as resource material for legal-aid providers (lawyers, judges) to promote access to justice, protect vulnerable groups and stimulate constitutional legislation.

Counselling, trauma and psychological support, as well as links to other survivor response mechanisms, were provided to 1,118 survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.

By establishing a national task force on case management and building its capacity, evidence­based case management in the justice sector became transparent and was enhanced.