by: Céline Dominique Nadler | May 2, 2024
South Sudan’s humanitarian partners again urged the government in Juba earlier this week to urgently remove various taxes and levies recently imposed on donor countries, UN agencies and NGOs. “We call on the Government of South Sudan to respect all agreements with humanitarian workers, including those with our NGO partners, and to immediately remove new taxes and tariffs so we can continue to support people in need,” he said in a statement UN Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan Anita Kiki Gbeho, before urging the South Sudanese government to follow up on assurances that humanitarian workers are exempt from such taxes to prevent operations from being paralysed.
Since February, the South Sudanese government has imposed a series of new taxes at the borders and within the country. Although the government has given assurances that these taxes will be removed, no written commitment has been made so far.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stressed that the new government measures would increase the cost of food aid and operations of the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) by $339,000 a month, a sum according to the UN, enough to feed more than 16,300 people for a month.
According to information reported by the United Nations, over 60,000 people have already been affected by the interruption of aid drops due to fuel shortages. If the measures are maintained, this number will rise to 145,000 by the end of May.
A dozen Western chancelleries, including the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom, urged Juba last week to immediately end the new taxes, citing in particular customs duties imposed on humanitarian products, mandatory testing of food rations and even mandatory stock costs.
© All rights reserved