Event Description.
Medical staff embarked USS Pearl Harbor (PHB) in support of Pacific Partnership 2013 humanitarian civic assistance mission 14 May-16 August, 2013.
Mission stops included Western Samoa 31 May-10 June, Kingdom of Tonga 1222 June, Republic of the Marshall Islands 03-13 July, Kiribati 15-26 July, and
Solomon Islands 29 July-07 August. Additional mission support included New
Zealand leading activities in Kiribati and HMNZS Canterbury in Solomon Islands
29 July-13 August, as well as Australia leading activities and HMAS Tobruk in
Papua New Guinea 15-26 July.
e. TOPIC. Disjointed Humanitarian Aid in South Sudan ( 2315 )
Observation.
Massive aid projects that were poorly designed – bypassing host nation
government involvement – contributed to an atmosphere of aid dependency in
South Sudan during the period 2011 to early 2015. Although the government of
South Sudan was in its infancy and lacked capacity and expertise, international
donors nonetheless should have involved the government in planning all major
aid programs, should not have focused programs so heavily on short-term
results, and should have formulated broader objectives of societal ownership and
long-term development.
Discussion.
The enormous humanitarian needs of South Sudan at the time of the signing of
the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005 (which ended civil war and
led to the creation of South Sudan) required and received an impressively large
international response. Over the next few years, the semi-autonomous
Government of South Sudan (GOSS) established functioning institutions, and the
number of aid agencies greatly proliferated; however, GOSS's coordination of
their activities remained limited. Weak administrative capacity of the government
rendered it unable to carry out basic administrative tasks, let alone complex
humanitarian, development, or peacebuilding projects. To compound matters,
various military generals continually incited conflict and rebellion, which
generated renewed humanitarian crises across the country. The GOSS never
succeeded in keeping its citizens safe or in providing critical services (healthcare,
education, road repairs, etc.). International donors opted to use Project Implementation Units that operated outside the government, as a means of avoiding
implementation failure (due to the government's shortcomings) and aimed for
more immediate dividends for communities.
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