BHA Baseline Survey Report| October 2021

DRC provides protection and life-saving humanitarian assistance, aiming to promote the protection of rights and peaceful coexistence. The organization has been operational in South Sudan since 2005, implementing multi-sectoral responses through static and mobile presence, responding to crises and addressing basic needs. DRC focuses on mainstreaming protection principles throughout all sectoral interventions alongside standalone protection responses as a protection-mandated organization. Since the 1st of September 2018, DRC has been implementing an Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) funded project in South Sudan through three sectors: protection, shelter and settlement, and humanitarian coordination and information management. The current Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) funded project commenced on the 1st of September 2021 with a timeframe of one year. The project's key objective is to save lives and improve the living conditions for the population affected by conflict and displacement in South Sudan. The project is implemented through four sectors: protection, humanitarian coordination and information management, shelter and settlements, and agriculture. The protection sector provides general protection assistance to the most vulnerable populations affected by conflict, including protection monitoring, referral to specialized actors, case management of those with protection concerns, community communication and information campaigns, and advocacy to humanitarian actors, stakeholders, and governments. The sector-specific objective is to improve the protective environment in target locations in South Sudan and increase access to essential protection prevention and response services. The humanitarian coordination and information management sector provides camp management and coordination of life-saving assistance to over 34,000 beneficiaries currently living with limited access to services. The main objective of this sector is to ensure the inclusive delivery of assistance to vulnerable populations in camps and out-of-camp settings through effective coordination and accountability mechanisms. The shelter and settlements sector provides improved shelter and a more dignified living environment through a large-scale reconfiguration and shelter reconstruction. The specific objective of this sector is to provide basic and essential shelter and non-food items (NFIs) to vulnerable households to reduce vulnerabilities. The agriculture sector is a new component of the project, focusing on building and rehabilitating communal assets through cash for assets, vocational skills training, and small micro-business targeting women-headed households. DRC also supports farmers with agricultural inputs and training in the use of drought-tolerant crops. The sector-specific objective is to provide emergency livelihood inputs to households at risk of acute food insecurity. The primary purpose of this baseline survey is to establish baseline benchmarks for the current BHA funded project, which started in August 2021. The baseline will assess the current general protection situation on the ground in Unity and Upper Nile state. The baseline report will include the four sectors of focus in this project, i.e. protection, agriculture, humanitarian coordination and information management, and shelter and settlements. Later during the project implementation, additional data will be collected to measure the project's progress through performance indicators monitoring (PIMs) and post-distribution monitoring (PDMs). The baseline survey was conducted through an all-embracing desk review of the project documents, including September and October monthly reports, endline reports, and the October indicators update reports. Most of the achieved values for the project were adopted as baseline values.