02/03/2018 - New National Disaster Risk Management Strategy for South Sudan
PfR South Sudan Country Team comprises of the five partner organizations: South Sudan Red Cross, Cordaid, Wetlands International, Netherlands Red Cross and Red Cross Climate Center. The team has successfully supported the government, through the Ministry of Disaster and Humanitarian Affairs, to develop the National Disaster Management strategic plan.
This has been a long but very inclusive and participatory process; The PfR County team through networking and lobby with key stakeholders in the country’s facilitated the formation of a policy working group. The key stakeholders for this Policy Working Group were the UN agencies such as UNEP and UNDP, different line ministries, INGOs and other donor agencies. The main focus was on the following: Integrated Risk management, Disaster Risk Reduction, and the Sendai Framework. Next, a core team was formed: this Steering Committee was tasked to develop and finalize the Disaster Risk Management strategy for South Sudan, as well as with the development of an operational Plan. The Steering Committee comprised of the Ministry of Humanitarian affairs, the Ministry of Water, the Ministry of Environment, UNDP, UNEP and PfR Country team South Sudan.
Partners for Resilience organised a three days workshop on Integrated Risk Management (IRM) for key stakeholders from the government (Ministry of Disaster & Humanitarian Affairs, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Agricultur)e and other partners involved in Disaster Risk Management in the country, in order to ensure that all stakeholders had a common understanding of IRM, and why the IRM approach is so critical.
PfR South Sudan supported government delegates to attend various relevant conferences such as The Global Platform for DRR, held in Cancun in May 2017, the Bonn Climate Conference in November 2018, conferences in West Africa with the African Union, and the East Africa regional convention, held in Rwanda. This way the country team successfully managed to build awareness and to strengthen capacity of relevant stakeholders. PfR brought in a clearer understanding of and linkages with global trends of Disaster Risk Management and supported the country in drafting the country policy on DRM.
As a result of all this, PfR could support the porcess of developing a five years strategic plan for the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management which has been approved now and is ready for operationalization. PfR is ready to provide further support in launching this strategic plan and to further disseminate it to the various stakeholders in South Sudan.
The full DRM strategy for South Sudan, can be read here
