South Sudan

  • Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan
  • From: 01/01/2025 to: 31/12/2025
  • Published: 16/12/2024
  • Coordinated by: OCHA

Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan South Sudan 2025 / Part 3: Cluster needs and response

3.7 Nutrition

People in need
4.3 million
People targeted
2.8 million
Requirements (US$)
$198.4 million

Summary of needs

Approximately 4.3 million children under age 5, adolescent girls and PLW will need life-saving nutrition treatment and preventive care. About 650,000 children under age 5 are at risk of severe acute malnutrition, 1.4 million children at risk of moderate acute malnutrition and 1.1 million mothers requiring urgent treatment (IPC-AMN 2024). In 49 counties, acute malnutrition rates exceed the emergency threshold of 15 per cent. In 2025, eight of 10 children under age 5 are anticipated to be at risk of acute malnutrition, with 7.7 million people – including 1.5 million young children – facing severe food insecurity. Fever, diarrhoea and respiratory infections and poor nutrition, water and sanitation access add to the crisis, further aggravated by economic challenges, climate impacts, heightened GBV risks and spillover effects from the Sudan crisis.

Response strategy

The cluster aims to provide timely, quality treatment to 2.1 million children with acute malnutrition, including 650,000 with severe acute malnutrition, as well as 1 million PLW and 1.2 million adolescent girls. Preventative interventions will reach 2.1 million children aged 6-59 months, and 2.2 million PLW and adolescent girls. Nutrition interventions will follow a multisectoral approach, coordinating with WASH, Health, FSL, Protection and Education clusters. The Nutrition Cluster will enhance coordination, implementation and localization efforts, and strengthen real-time nutrition data systems for faster response and resilience programming. Humanitarian assistance will transition gradually to government support, leveraging platforms like the HSTP.

Targeting and prioritization

In 2025, the cluster will target 2.8 million of the 4.3 million people in need of nutrition assistance from high-vulnerability counties following the agreed inter-sectoral prioritization for multisectoral nutrition services. The cluster will ensure the delivery of life-saving acute malnutrition treatment to all children and cover other children not affected by humanitarian crises through close coordination with developmental partners. FSNMS, SMART and other nutrition vulnerability assessments will be used to monitor the situation, and for real-time prioritization of people in critical need.

A health worker screening a child for malnutrition in Malakal PoC site, Upper Nile State.

Malakal PoC site, Upper Nile State, South Sudan.

A health worker screening a child for malnutrition.

OCHA/Sarah Waiswa

Promoting accountable and inclusive programming

Communities and affected people will be engaged throughout the planning and design of humanitarian assistance following the seven pillars of AAP. The cluster will focus on strengthening community engagement mechanisms, ensuring that community voices, especially those from marginalized groups, are integrated into decision-making. This will be achieved through increasing local partner representation in cluster coordination at all levels and providing targeted capacity-building. The cluster will continue to strengthen and implement monitoring and feedback systems that capture beneficiary input and track programme effectiveness. The cluster will use the AAP framework and monitoring reporting tool developed by the Global Nutrition Cluster. In 2025, the Nutrition Cluster will prioritize advancing localization to strengthen the role and effectiveness of national and local partners in nutrition response.

The detailed cluster strategy can be found online here

For more information on the cluster monitoring, please click here

References

  1. [1] UNICEF-ESA-Intergrating-AAP-2020.pdf
  2. [2] AAP Operational Framework | Global Nutrition Cluster
  3. [3] NC AAP Reporting Tool | Global Nutrition Cluster