In Malakal, in north-eastern South Sudan, the Logistics Cluster story is a tale of partnerships.
Since early 2014, IOM has been the focal point for the cluster in Malakal, a city on the banks of the White Nile. Here, humanitarian agencies support the Protection of Civilians (POC) camp, home to approximately 30,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs), as well as communities located along the river.
For the South Sudan operation, the Malakal hub remains one of the busiest, with no signs of slowing down. In fact, its capacities and operations only continue to expand. From storage, to receiving cargo flights, as well as river and road transport, the response runs at full-speed 365 days of the year.
Below, we run through three facts you might not know about the Malakal operation.
6,000 m2; thousands of humanitarian items
As part of the response, the Logistics Cluster maintains seven Mobile Storage Units as well as outdoor storage space, representing nearly 6,000 square meters of available space for 24 humanitarian organisations. That’s about the same size as 15 basketball courts!
As most of the organisations based in Malakal do not have their own warehouses, the common storage provided by the Logistics Cluster is vital for the storage of life-saving nutrition, WASH, and health items as well as livelihood and educational materials for the residents of the POC and surrounding areas. According to Nina Asutsa, Logistics Officer for IOM: “the need for material storage is high. Most of the agencies…fully rely on the Logistics Cluster for storage.”
The White Nile: A lifeline for critical aid
Throughout 2018, the Logistics Cluster supported the humanitarian community in South Sudan with six barge trips from Bor to Malakal – a 9 day, approximately 600-kilometre journey - transporting around 1,700 mt of life-saving cargo. This is double the number of barges from 2017.
Shared resources, for a shared goal
On a day-to-day basis the Malakal hub stays busy with IOM Common Transport Service (CTS) trucks carrying humanitarian supplies into the POC camp and Malakal town. As Malakal is a dispatch location for most of the Upper Nile region of the country, the cluster also dispatches cargo beyond Malakal by road to locations such as Akoka, Baliet, and Melut during dry season.
The humanitarian community relies on the Logistics Cluster to carry out its lifesaving operations in and around Malakal, and the cluster in turn relies on the relationship with IOM to carry out this important work. To find out more about the South Sudan response, see the Logistics Cluster operation page here.