17 March 2014 - Its contractor forced to flee when fighting broke out last December in Jonglei State, UNICEF now plans to finish building 10 classrooms for a girls’ school in the capital Bor.

“Unfortunately, that project was just 40 per cent completed when the fighting started,” said UNICEF chief of field operations in South Sudan Abdul Khadi Musa. “Our contractor and labourers ran away from Bor.”

The agency would like to complete the school so that its 350 students can make up for education they missed since the current crisis began. As many people had also been displaced to Bor from other areas, Mr. Musa said the school's enrolment could reach 500.

“Now there is some kind of stability … in Bor town,” Mr. Musa said. “We are pushing to bring back the contractor so that he can use the opportunity of tranquility in Bor to speed up completion of the classrooms.”

The classrooms are being built through UN Quick Impact Project (QIP) funding of $120,000. The QIP aimed to create jobs for youths and help reconstruct the education system in South Sudan.

Besides education, UNICEF emergency programmes have been delivering water, collecting garbage, immunizing children against polio and measles and delivering nutritional supplements to the malnourished in Bor, Malakal in Upper Nile, Bentiu in Unity and the capital Juba.

The agency has also set up child-friendly schools, assessed water points in Bor, constructed latrines and provided hygiene education.

UNICEF is now planning to scale up its operations in nine locations where 90 per cent of war-affected people have been displaced. It is mobilizing a rapid response team of various organizations to reach remote communities in Nasir, Melut and other areas of greater Upper Nile as well as Akobo in Jonglei.