The Start Fund launched in April for its six-month ‘design and build’ phase. Immediately, the first activation raised questions about the Fund’s scope and positioning. When impending floods threatened to make access impossible to remote locations in South Sudan, what sort of activities would be considered an acceptable and effective use of the Start Fund to meet humanitarian need and ensure positive outcomes for those affected by the conflict?
Millions of people in South Sudan continue to be affected by the conflict that broke out on 15 December 2013. When the Start Fund was alerted on April 1, nearly 5 million people were in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Evidence showed that 3.7 million were already at high risk of food insecurity and over one million displaced from their homes.[1] Not only had the conflict severely prohibited humanitarian access, but also the impending early onset of the rainy season threatened to make roads entirely impassable and landing strips useless. It looked likely that the country would slide into outright famine.
The unpredictable nature of the conflict also made it difficult to project how the crisis would unfold. Cyclical displacements across much of the country led to huge population movements. Organisations and their partners had been operating in remote parts of the country for some time, which meant they had local staff and capacity to respond to the emergency quickly. But a major threat loomed. In some key areas, their supplies were dwindling, and the rains had already started. Floods would soon make it impossible to re-stock relief items in remote regions. How would agencies then continue their emergency response to avoid complete stop-gaps and shortages of life-saving food, nutrition, shelter and sanitation items?
A controversial launch
With this in mind, the Start Fund was activated for the first time, but not without controversy. Major funds had already been committed – a snapshot of the UNOCHA’s Humanitarian Response Plan from 27 March showed that USD 315 million had already been met. However, that made up only 30% of the South Sudan Crisis Response Plan. In addition, DfID had already provided £12.5 million of humanitarian funding since the start of latest crisis. As the Fund’s largest donor, would Start projects be able to ensure complementarity?
Time, however, was of the essence. Institutional funds committed to South Sudan had either already been allocated or would take weeks to come on board. By that time, it would be too late to address the immediate, urgent need to preposition key supplies before the floods.
Conventional or innovative?
Another consideration applied. While the CBHA[2] pilot proved that humanitarian assistance could be delivered faster and more timely to disaster affected communities, the types of response activities it funded were usually linear (eg distribution of emergency aid). Non-linear activities (eg pre-positioning of supplies, nutrition data collection) such as those proposed by projects in the South Sudan response added an extra layer of complexity. It was argued that a 45 day grant would help alleviate suffering in some off the hardest to reach places by filling some of the otherwise inevitable supply chain gaps.
With this in mind, members activated the Fund with the express recommendation that small amounts of funding be made available for prepositioning activities. There was a conscious decision on the part of the members at this stage to pave the way for more innovative, less linear approaches when the humanitarian situation warranted it.
Prepositioning pays off
Tearfund was awarded a grant to do just that, to preposition 900 cartons of RUSF[3] in Uror and 300 cartons of RUTF[4] in Padiek payam. Getting these stocks in place before the rains came would fill a one-month supply gap in an existing nutrition programme. They would later be distributed to reach an estimated 7,963 children suffering from moderate acute malnutrition and 427 children with severe acute malnutrition.
Despite procurement challenges at the beginning, Tearfund managed to source and transport all of the supplies to six feeding centres during its 45 day Start Fund grant. This meant that stocks were replenished in time. While some distribution activities took place before the end of the implementation period, most of the supplies would not be actually used until after the Start-funded project had ended.
During the project, Tearfund also received confirmation of additional funding from DFATD, ECHO and WFP. These funds would enable Tearfund to continue their core nutrition activities (including the operations of feeding centres in Uror), integrate WaSH activities into the nutrition programme and replenish its stock of therapeutic foods to ensure treatment of malnutrition for the duration of the year.
While non-conventional for an emergency response fund, the aim of prepositioning stocks had been met, and not a moment too soon. The rains did come, and within a fortnight humanitarian staff implementing Start grants had been stranded by the floods. Fortunately, floods did not stop Tearfund’s life-saving nutrition activities from continuing in these remote locations, since the supplies were poised for immediate distribution to malnourished children.
[1] OCHA Situation Report No. 29 as of 27 March 2014
[2] Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies, the Start Networks’ predecessor
[3] Ready-to-use Supplementary Food
[4] Ready-to-use Therapeutic Food