United Nations Country Team holds a 2-day Strategic Prioritization Retreat to decide on the UNSDCF Priorities for 2023-2025

On 7 - 9 December, Senior Government officials, representatives from Civil Society Organizations, youth, UN in South Sudan and other stakeholders gathered at Palm Africa hotel in Juba for a 2-day Strategic Prioritization retreat, to agree on the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2023-2025 priorities.

This retreat is a follow-up to the consultations on 25 November 2021 on the Common Country Analysis (CCA) and Independent Evaluation of the 2019-2022 UN Cooperation Framework (UNCF). The objective of the Strategic Prioritization retreat is to identify priorities and Results to be achieved by 2025 under the next UNSDCF.

“This week we are focusing on the strategic priorities, linking what the UN will be doing to support the country’s needs and creating a set of priorities that will inform our work for the period 2023-2025” emphasized the UN RC ai Matthew Hollingworth.

The strategic prioritization workshop drew upon emerging priorities from the NDS review, the 2030 Agenda, the CCA, UNCF Evaluation, Fragility Assessment, and UN system and its partners’ comparative advantage, with a particular focus on the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations including internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees, women, youth and children as well as the elderly and persons with disabilities.

“We will do everything within our power to come up with a workable and achievable plan that meets the aspirations of the people of South Sudan” stressed the RC ai.

“South Sudan faces social, political, economic and climate change challenges, so we need to put together the actions that need to be taken for the people of South Sudan to achieve their full potential. Mathew added.

In his keynote speech, the Minister of Finance and Planning Hon. Agak Achuil Lual advised that duplication of services should be avoided. As nationwide coverage should be considered, efforts should be made to cover all the ten states and three administrative areas of Ruweng, Pibor and Abyei”, and that priority should be accorded to the marginalized and hard-to-reach areas.

“We expect the UN’s strategic priorities to be strongly aligned with the revised National Development Strategy (NDS)”, said Hon. Agak Achuil Lual.

The Minister also noted that the country has been hit by several disasters including the Covid-19 pandemic, desert locusts, floods and a reduction in oil production and prices. In the midst of all these, the Government has continued to implement the revitalized peace agreement and embarked on public finance reforms aimed at macroeconomic stability, service delivery and revival of the productive sectors of the economy.