Building the resilience of persons with disabilities to adapt with climate change in South Sudan: Project completion report

Summary

South Sudan is among the countries highest at risk to floods, droughts and climate related epidemics. In 2022, the UN estimated over 1 million people have been affected by recurrent floods across the country, disproportionately affecting women, children and people with disabilities (PwDs). Despite the existence of the National Plan of Action (NAP) for Climate Adaptation, its translation at local level is nonexistence, and has limitedly reflected the mechanisms of engaging vulnerable groups, particularly older people and People with Disabilities in early warning and risk awareness, including the tools and evidence necessary to advocate for their needs.

This initiative will strengthen the disaster resilience of persons with disabilities and local community structures through improving the early warning systems and enabling the design of effective adaptation options with persons with disabilities. The project will gather appropriate and disaggregated data, which can be used to drive disability inclusive actions.

This project aims to Build the Resilience of Person with Disabilities to adapt with Climate Change in Jonglei State South Sudan. it includes capacity building of local Disabled Persons groups/Associations (DPOs), establishing an inclusive community response capability, carryout Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment (VCA) of persons with disabilities including an accessibility assessment of PwDs to critical infrastructure including disaster shelters and current climate early warning systems.

In addition, this action will address disability inclusion across DRR (Disaster Risk Reduction) and CCA (Climate Change Adaptation), by accelerating sharing and dissemination of VCA findings among local, subnational and national actors through state level workshops on disability inclusion in DRR/CCA. Specific disability inclusive training manuals will be reproduced in local languages and specific tools to assist in training Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (CMDRR) committees, DPOs, local authorities and community leaders on the issues related to persons with disabilities.