CERF: Innovation and impact: Building on the past and moving to the future - Statement by the Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan, Mr. Eugene Owusu 17 december 2015

Excellences, Ladies and Gentlemen,

• It is a true honour for me to have been invited here today to mark with you 10 years since the Central Emergency Response Fund began saving lives around the world through timely, flexible and critical funding.

• You have heard from my distinguished fellow panellists about the vital role that CERF plays in global humanitarian action. I would like to add to their voices a country-level perspective and to tell you about the lives that CERF has saved in South Sudan over the past two years.

• When conflict broke out in South Sudan in December 2013, needs escalated rapidly. Within weeks, more than 200,000 people had fled their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs, including 60,000 who arrived at UN bases desperately seeking protection from the fighting. Two years into the conflict, some 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes, including almost 650,000 who have fled to other countries. Some 200,000 displaced people are sheltering in UN bases. Hunger is rampant, with 3.9 million people facing severe food insecurity. Some 680,000 children are acutely malnourished, 230,000 of them severely. Nearly one in every three schools has been closed, compromising the education of some 900,000 children, including some 350,000 forced out of school.

• The CERF has made a vital contribution to a targeted and coordinated response to these challenges. Allocations totalling $67m since the onset of the crisis have assisted some 1.5 million most vulnerable, emergency affected people.

• On 9 January 2014 – just three weeks after the conflict began - the Emergency Relief Coordinator allocated $15 million from the CERF to enable humanitarian partners to rapidly scale-up their operations. The funds were instrumental in enabling humanitarian partners – including UN agencies, IOM, international NGOs and national NGOs - to improve living conditions for tens of thousands of people in the cramped and crowded UN bases and to reach people by air in remote locations that were inaccessible or too insecure to get to by road.

• This was the first of seven CERF allocations, totalling more than $67 million, made to South Sudan since the conflict erupted. These funds have enabled the Humanitarian Country Team to act swiftly and decisively in the face of immense challenges, strengthening coordinated action between UN agencies and NGOs to ensure a coherent response through the cluster system and aligned with HCT priorities.

So my first message is: CERF saves lives: with CERF funding, the HCT has succeeded in addressing critical life-saving needs including: the establishment and maintenance of IDP and refugee camps; tackled acute malnutrition amongst the most vulnerable children; contained life-threatening cholera outbreaks; assisted survivors of sexual and gender based violence; and reached people in remote locations with innovative survival kits.

The survival kit project encapsulates how CERF funding can act as a powerful catalyst for innovative, rapid and coordinated humanitarian action. The kits were developed by a multi-agency team of NGO and UN staff to respond to the unique challenges of the South Sudan operating environment. They are light and portable, easily transportable by air and easily carried by the people who receive them, many of whom have been displaced multiple times. They contain shortterm assistance for families on the run, including mosquito nets, short-maturity vegetable seeds, fishing supplies, water carrying containers, water purification tablets, oral rehydration salts, nutritional biscuits for children and kitchen sets.

• I would like to share with you a story from the most recent survival kit distribution, which took place last week in Leer County of Unity State. Aid workers managed to return to Leer on 1 December after months of intense fighting. On the ground, they met with a courageous young woman, Nyaluak, who told them:

“We have never seen this type of war since we were born. No one is spared – not even the elderly, children or mothers. When the armed men come, we normally run to the swamp…but we are still not safe there. They come and find you in the swamp and take you and sometimes rape you. These survival kits are a sign that humanitarians and the rest of the world have not completely forgotten about us. All that we own was looted in the last seven months, but these kits will help us manage, in this extremely difficult time, and will help us return to some sense of normality.”

Excellences, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nyaluak’s story is a reminder that, in South Sudan, CERF-funded humanitarian action has provided a rare beacon of hope where there has often been none. CERF is more than just a vital source of timely and flexible funding; it is a signal to people facing dire and unthinkable circumstances that the world is standing with them.

My second message: CERF strengthens coordination: CERF processes strengthen coordination to ensure a flexible and timely response, while leveraging other resources: the allocation process draws on the collective analysis of the coordination system, including HCT, ICWG and other donors, in prioritising what should be funded. This ensures that CERF funds are allocated with flexibility to where they will have the greatest impact.

My third and final message: CERF helps strengthen partnerships. CERF is continually leveraged to strengthen partnerships between the UN agencies and NGOs. Strictly, only UN agencies are eligible to receive CERF funds in the first instance, but the UN agencies have consistently leveraged the CERF to strengthen partnerships with NGOs. There are numerous examples of involving NGOs in programme delivery to take maximum advantage of the capacities and expertise of different organisations on the ground.

As Humanitarian Coordinator working in a very challenging, complex and unpredictable context, I find the fact that the CERF exists as a critical funding window and a first line of response most reassuring and empowering. The CERF saves lives; it provides quick resources to kick start response; fills funding gaps; complements other country level funding mechanisms; enables agencies to leverage funding from other donors; allows me as HC to directly influence funding strings to priority activities.

• On behalf of the South Sudan HCT, allow me to use this opportunity to profoundly thank the CERF’s contributory donors for empowering us through the CERF to continue to save lives and livelihoods.

I thank you.