UGANDA. FINDING SAFETY. A South Sudanese boy holds his baby brother while his family is registered in Busia, before being transferred to a refugee settlement. © U N H C R /A L E S S A N D R O P E N S O More than 224,000 people41 sought refuge in Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites and many have been there since December 2013. These are IDP settlements on UN premises, often inside UN peacekeeping bases. 60 per cent of residents were children and there were also disproportionately more women, as men often remain to defend their families’ livelihoods. The areas of South Sudan worst affected by internal displacement were the former states of Unity, Jonglei, Central Equatoria and Upper Nile. Over the course of 2016, 739,900 fled South Sudan as refugees and asylum-seekers. Of them, the vast majority went to neighbouring countries, especially Uganda. This population in Uganda increased more than threefold during 2016, from 199,400 to 639,000. The Ugandan Government provided South Sudanese refugees with plots of land for agricultural purposes and access to all public services, despite a severe shortfall in funding (UNHCR operations were only 33 per cent funded, with a gap of 186 million USD). Uganda also was the first country to apply the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework linked to the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants to support the Government’s progressive refugee policies and initiatives. 32 Other countries hosting South Sudanese refugees included Ethiopia (338,800), Sudan (297,200), Kenya (87,100), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (66,700), the Central African Republic (4,900), and Egypt (2,500). A YOU N G , RU R A L E M E RG E N CY Two-thirds of refugees from South Sudan were children under the age of 18. Children under the age of five, especially vulnerable to disease and undernutrition, represented nearly 1 in 5 refugees. Older child refugees were at risk of not having their educational needs met. Women made up 63 per cent of the refugee adult population and working age men (aged 18 to 59) were a small minority of the entire refugee population. This refugee crisis is overwhelmingly rural in nature, with 91 per cent of refugees from South Sudan living in rural locations in countries of asylum. CO N F LI C T D E E PE N I N G Unfortunately there was little evidence of a resolution to the conflict in 2016 and UN reports warned of looming food insecurity for 5.5 million people – UNHCR > GLOBAL TRENDS 2016