Nutrition

Advancing nutrition in South Sudan requires local capable human resources, effective national institutions, and functional systems to plan, manage, and evaluate programmes. Strong national commitment and government leadership along with the active engagement of communities, the private sector, and civil society are essential for achieving and sustaining nutrition outcomes.

THESO will support the national development efforts of strong human and institutional capacity in nutrition to create well-educated cadres of nutrition profession­als, who have scientific backgrounds and competencies to provide strate­gic leadership at national, state, county and community levels. USAID will strengthen essential country systems that assure good governance, resource tracking and accountability, as well as effective management and delivery of services at national, regional, and local levels. Ensuring capacity within communities to provide leadership and management of nutrition-related activities is also fundamental.

The commitment of South Sudan leadership to nutrition at all levels, including larger and sustained resource allocations for nutrition, is essential to creating and sustaining momentum and for conversion of that momentum into results on the ground. Building national, cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder commitment to nutrition will foster coordination across government ministries, promote public-private partner­ships, build country capacity, set strong policy founda­tions, and increase the ease and likelihood of being able to expand availability and utilisation of nutrition services.

THESO will continue contributing to promoting strong national commit­ment to nutrition, investing in the development and im­plementation of country policies, strategies, and systems for nutrition, multi-stakeholder engagement, and effective regulatory standards and norms. Support to and engage­ment of the private sector including the food industry, WASH products and services, telecommunications, phar­maceutical, and delivery of quality nutrition services are important components of reinforcing country capacity.

Effective multi-sectoral coordination along with col­laborative planning and programming across sectors at national, state, and county levels are necessary to accelerate and sustain nutrition improvements and programming nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions in the same geographic areas can also be effective to improve nutrition outcomes.

THESO will work with MoH and partners to strengthen national multi sectoral coordi­nation and promote the establishment of mechanisms and programmes to jointly plan and programme resources across sectors for nutrition results. In partnership with governments, donors, and United Nations agen­cies, THESO will strive to bring together the necessary sectors to effectively improve nutrition in targeted areas. THESO aim to expand linkages and joint planning between humanitarian assistance and development programmes in order to build resilience, reduce the negative impacts of periodic or recurrent shocks, and improve economic and social opportunities for sustainable nutritional outcomes.

THESO seeks to accelerate reductions in malnutrition – particularly chronic and acute under-nutrition in young children and malnutrition in adolescent girls and women of reproductive age – by increasing the equitable pro­vision and utilisation of high-quality nutrition services. Both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive inter­ventions are necessary to further impact and reduce malnutrition.

THESO will strengthen service delivery systems to ensure timely and equitable delivery of services for all vulnerable populations working closely with South Sudan MoH and other partners across different sectors to achieve large-scale, sus­tainable nutrition impact and ensure quality of services as a primary determinant of ultimate effectiveness and impact. All nutrition programmes will consider the key roles of girls and women and focus activities that target women’s nutrition for their own health. THESO will support the social and behaviour change strategies and approaches that are essential components of nutri­tion-specific and -sensitive activities.

THESO will engages with the global nutrition community to improve South Sudan strategic and technical coordination, develop a stronger evidence base to inform and ad­dress national nutrition priorities, and support ongoing application of innovation and experiential knowledge to improve national policy, strategy and practice. THESO will continue its participation in the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement.

Together, these actions represent a roadmap to ensure that THESO supported nutrition initiatives align with and contribute significantly to ongoing national and state-level efforts to improve nutrition for all. A dynamic and diverse global nutrition community is working towards a vision bigger than what any one organisation or sector can achieve alone. Thus, there is a clear need for coordination and collaboration among a wide spectrum of partners with diverse strengths and expertise, and clear systems for generating and applying evidence and learning across multiple regions and stake­ holder groups, including South Sudan and national governmental agencies, United Nations agencies, civil society, donors, international organisations, academia, and the private sector. Evidence and knowledge must also be shared across multiple sectors and cross cutting areas.