Since 2013, South Sudan has been plagued by civil war, intercommunal violence, and natural disasters such as sustained flooding. Therefore, many South Sudanese are either internally displaced or have crossed the border into Uganda where women and children now constitute more than 80% of the South Sudanese refugee population. A lack of cross-border projects addressing root causes of conflict and supporting especially female refugees and returnees as well as host communities was identified and a project designed to strengthen conflict and gender sensitive community resilience in Northern Uganda and Central Equatoria, South Sudan, through a wide range of activities.

The project connects three Austrian and four local organizations with peacebuilding, humanitarian, and development expertise and follows the principle of complementarity among those actors. In addition to supporting vulnerable populations in different areas on both sides of the South Sudanese-Ugandan border, conflict and gender sensitive humanitarian and development programming shall be promoted through the project. It serves as a pilot case for coordinated action among organizations with different expertise and shall produce lessons learned for future projects.