WAU - As an economic crisis grips the country and the impact of extraordinary flooding lingers, communities across South Sudan are suffering from a lack of food and other essential goods as well as skyrocketing prices for what little is available.

Among the hardest hit are inmates serving time in prisons across South Sudan. To help the National Prisons Service overcome this challenge, the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) came together to start a pilot project – the ‘Green Corrections Initiative.’

It aims to train those incarcerated as well as prison officers in scientific ways to cultivate food crops.

As part of the initiative in Raja County, the UNMISS Rule of Law Section led the training of 50 prison officers in agricultural skills.

“We learned many new techniques for getting the best out of our crops, such as understanding that planting vegetables like tomatoes can be done in two seasons – rainy and dry,” said First Lieutenant, Alfred Mathew.

“They taught us how to cultivate groundnuts, sorghum, sesame and beans to yield good production, both for consumption and commercial purposes,” said Seargent Hanan Paul.

Raja, as one of the three counties in Western Bahr El Ghazal, is more than 300 kilometers from the state headquarters and has a county prison hosting more than 50 inmates, including those transferred from Wau due to congestion in the central prison.

"This is an initiative developed by UNMISS’ corrections unit to enhance food security in prison, improve agricultural livelihood opportunities, and help decongest the facility by establishing an agricultural open camp prison,” said UNMISS Correction officer, Joseph Banda.

The Acting Executive Director of Raja County, Dahia Abdelrahaman encouraged the prison officers to share their new skills with their communities to improve the productivity of farming enterprises across the region.