Coordinated support to the NGO Forum members to improve and save lives The proposed project aims to contribute to effective and principled delivery of humanitarian assistance in South Sudan by national and international member organizations of the South Sudan NGO Forum in order to save lives and improve lives within the context of Revitalized Peace Agreement signed on September 12, 2018. Specifically, the project will work on various aspects of the creation of an ‘enabling environment’ for humanitarian assistance, namely: administrative, legal, political and security-related concerns, but also gaps in coordination and support to frontline engagement with authorities.

As a network and membership body of over 379 NGOs (263 NNGOs and 116 INGOs), the South Sudan NGO Forum provides a unique platform to promote safe and secure access providing capacity building for NGOs through providing humanitarian training sharing best practices in humanitarian delivery and information exchanges forging collaborations between the INGOs and national NGOs coordinating the collective voices of the NGOs for common positions ensuring accountability to effected populations the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse and joint engagement for enabling environment for INGOs and NNGOs operating in South Sudan. The members of NGO Forum are present in all counties of South Sudan and deliver services across all sectors.

This project will allow the NGO Forum to continue to effectively support the NGO community in South Sudan by facilitating the protection of humanitarian space and respect for aid workers for improved delivery of humanitarian assistance to save and improved lives. The NGO Forum will strengthen and enhance coordination on issues of security, bureaucratic and access impediments and facilitate joint engagement with authorities, both national and local levels in tackling impediments that interfere with the effective delivery of services to the populations in need. The project will also focus on identifying and supporting referral pathways for the reporting of cases of sexual exploitation and abuse, and increasing the understanding across the sector of how to prevent or respond to cases.

The project will also support the review of the NGO Act 2016 to ensure humanitarian space and NGO space are protected for continued delivery of assistance to populations I need. In a similar vein the project will further support the development of information systems for NGO staffing with the national Ministry of Labour to help protect NGOs national staff whose positions are regularly politicized at field levels. This will provide national level assurance and protection of legally recruited NGO national staff.  

The NGO Forum has a 3-person security team at the national-level. To enhance the effectiveness of this team, in the interests of members, this project will help to project safety and security support and best practices to the states by providing safety, security and PSEA focal points who are focused on ensuring members are safe, able to operate effectively and within the guidelines of best practice, such as on PSEA.
The project will build on the improved relations with national level government authorities to improve relations with local authorities to reduce bureaucratic impediments and to improve acknowledgement of NGOs’ humanitarian identity and adherence to humanitarian principles and contribute to safe operating environments and allow access to populations in need of assistance. The project will facilitate workshops at national level with state agencies such as the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) to identify key issues affecting humanitarian agency operations. The state level workshops will be held with local authorities to discuss these issues affecting humanitarian programmes and solutions and action plans will be identified. COVID-19 awareness outreach information dissemination will be part and parcel of every engagements under project.