0 Methodology .................................................................................................................................4

Due to these economic shocks and the movement restrictions many lost their jobs at a time when acute food insecurity was already high.4

Across the globe women and girls have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. In particular, there has been a notable rise in the use of violence against women and girls and an increase in the demand for women and girls to perform unpaid care-work, particularly with the increased care needs of the sick and elderly combined with the long periods of school closures.5 These findings hold true for women and girls in Wau as there

5 UNICEF. (2020). Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women. has been an increased number of reports of violence against women and girls received by the SIHA One-stop Center in Wau.

While the center received 286 VAWG survivors in 2019, this number rose to 620 survivors in 2020, 578 of which were girls, and 604 survivors in 2021, 585 of which were girls.6 As noted in a UNICEF Policy Brief on the Impact of COVID-19, “all of these impacts are further amplified in contexts of fragility, conflict, and emergencies where social cohesion is already undermined, and institutional capacity and services are limited.”7

6 OSC – SIHA Report Summary Statistics for years 20192021. 7 UNICEF. (2020). Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women.

1.2 Purpose and Scope of the Study

This study was undertaken within the scope of SIHA Network’s project: Challenging Patterns and Drivers of Sexual Violence against Women and Girls in Wau, South Sudan, funded by the UN Trust Fund, to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on school-age girls in Wau, South Sudan. The project sought to inspire community-level change in norms and attitudes towards violence against women and girls and promote gender equality.

The findings of this study shall inform and guide SIHA Network’s interventions on behalf of girls in South Sudan and in Wau post COVID-19 and may be used to guide engagement by other actors who seek to improve the situation of school-age girls in Wau in the wake of the pandemic. The research was conducted in Wau municipality, covering the five blocks and Eastern Bank in Jur River County. The desk review, inception report development, data collection and data cleaning for this research were conducted between February 2021 and May 2021.

The numerous setbacks and hurdles brought on by the pandemic have delayed the process of publishing this paper, and at the time of publishing schools in South Sudan have reopened, and unfortunately the concerns raised in this paper about girls’ decreased opportunities to return to school have been validated by early findings that approximately 27% of school-age children

4 WFP South Sudan. (2020). COVID-19: Potential impact on South Sudan. 5 UNICEF. (2020). Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women. 6 OSC – SIHA Report Summary Statistics for years 20192021. 7 UNICEF. (2020). Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Women.