The United Nations has warned that despite the austerity measures put in place by South Sudan to deal with its economic woes, humanitarian agencies will have to increase relief efforts in order to keep the country’s poor alive as the financial situation worsens.
South Sudan is losing its forests. And with no unified policy to deal with the situation the government is at odds, with one ministry saying that the loss of forests is a necessity for farming and another warning of the dire environmental consequences if this continues unchecked.
Three years ago, the African Union began a continent-wide campaign to reduce the number of women who die when pregnant or giving birth.
In the wake of border tensions, the United Nations is airlifting 12,000 southerners from a Sudanese frontier town into South Sudan. But they are returning home in the midst of an economic crisis that has the U.N. warning it may appeal for more funding to scale up humanitarian operations.
It is late afternoon and a group of men and women begin to converge under the shade of a huge mango tree in Yambio town, the capital of South Sudan’s western Equatoria state. The group is not gathering for an ethnic, political or religious meeting. They are here to listen to the radio.
The United Nations’ 56
th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) begins today in New York, with the empowerment of rural women high on a list of priorities for this year.