US envoy calls for conducive environment for humanitarian workers

The United States Ambassador to South Sudan, Michael J.Adler has called upon the government to create conducive environment for aid workers to enable them provide badly needed humanitarian assistance across the country.

Adler was speaking at the event organized by the Rome-based agencies of the United Nations including UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and World Food Programme (WFP) in Juba.

“It is incumbent upon the transitional government to first create an environment that is conducive to development assistance and investment, so that donors and investors can more effectively help the South Sudanese people,” Adler said in a statement issued in Juba on Wednesday.

“The transitional government must also increase its contribution to humanitarian assistance to its people who are in greatest need. In the South Sudan context, it is misleading to frame the challenge facing us purely in terms of a peace-humanitarian-development nexus. Here, we need to focus first on the peace humanitarian-governance nexus,” he said.

Adler revealed that more than 130 aid workers have been killed in this country since 2013, adding that factors that impede aid delivery including sub-national violence are in the hands of the transitional government of national unity.  

“Mention could be made of a range of factors that are in the hands of the transitional government to address. These include corruption and the lack of transitional government use of public revenue to respond to humanitarian needs. These also include subnational violence and failure to meet commitments made in the 2018 peace agreement,” he said.