Enhancing Food Security and Livelihoods access through improving livestock production and fisheries in Guit County, Unity State, South Sudan. The project aims to increase food availability to both vulnerable IDPs and host community members through increasing productivity of livestock assets leading to availability of milk and meat and the distribution of fishing and vegetable kits for diversified food sources. It will target 3,335 HHs for livestock intervention, 2,045 HHs for fishing equipment and 1550 HHs for dry season Vegetable cultivation. The conflict of 2015 negatively affected people’s livelihoods, through the disruption of planting, livestock rearing, trade routes and markets in Guit County and indeed the entire Unity state. It left farmers unable to sow and harvest their crops and fishers unable to freely access fishing beaches. Many agro-pastoralists become destitute, as their livestock on which they relied during hard times, had been forcefully taken, and a lot of livestock suffered high disease burden leading to high mortality with consequent reduced productivity. The counties in Southern and Central Unity state have been characterized by severe food and nutrition insecurity which the recent IPC June 2016 classified as crisis (level 4) and nutrition indicators show GAM rates around 30% recorded in numerous assessments conducted by UNICEF and other nutrition partners in the area.  
 
In 2015, Joint Aid Management South Sudan (JAM SS) implemented an Emergency Livelihood Response Program in partnership with FAO to support vulnerable members of the community in Guit County with emergency Livelihood kits and livestock intervention, in ‘hard to reach’ locations. The project was successfully implemented with over 65,000 animals vaccinated at a time when access was seriously limited due to insecurity and impassable roads. JAM SS has just successfully completed the implementation of  a 3-month FAO supported CHF round one food security and livelihood project in Guit targeting a combined 7473 HHs with mainly field crops kits (3,000) with limited quantities of both vegetable(1,500) and fishing kits(2,973). The project focused on enhancing food security through delivery of seeds and tools for field crop production. JAM SS therefore is poised to complete support to the communities in Guit by applying for round 2 allocation targeting Livestock and fishery.  
 
JAM SS has the necessary on-ground presence and community linkages required to support a livestock vaccination and treatment campaign. In addition JAM will provide robust support to the fishery activities whose contribution to the livelihood of many people have increased in recent months, owing to ease of access and abundance of fish in the many rivers and swamps that dot Guit County and indeed Unity state. When crops failed or were destroyed in conflict as happened in 2015, most people turned attention to fishing in remote hard to reach areas for survival. The lack of fishing gear however limited their ability to exploit the resource adequately.
 
The existing animal health services delivery systems are not adequate to address the livestock health problems and improve their productivity. In general, the veterinary services provision for the pastoralists in the state has been hampered by a number of factors poor infrastructure, mobility of the pastoralists over vast areas, high delivery costs, shortage of trained manpower and logistical constraints. In view of these challenges as well as the need to strengthen the provision of Animal health services and improve disease investigation, control, surveillance, monitoring and reporting systems, JAM SS planned to implement veterinary services delivery program with the deployment of Community based Animal health workers (CBAHWs) who were re-trained in August 2015. The aim of the proposed intervention is to expand services coverage and protect this very important productive asset, improve productivity and increase availability of milk and meat. JAM SS has a team of well trained animal health services personnel led by a ve