Call for Proposals from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), including NGOs for small grants to provide legal aid including legal representation, legal awareness and legal advice, and psychosocial sup…

Tender summary

Overview Background and Context: Since gaining independence in 2011, South Sudan has continued to face significant challenges in building effective state institutions capable of delivering essential public services, including justice and security. The country remains in a fragile and conflict-affected context characterized by prolonged armed conflict, displacement, weak governance systems, and limited institutional capacity. Women and girls have been disproportionately affected, particularly through conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), gender-based violence (GBV), and other grave human rights violations. Although the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) marked important progress toward peace and stabilization, access to justice for most South Sudanese citizens remains severely constrained, particularly for vulnerable and marginalized populations. South Sudan continues to experience considerable access to justice challenges arising from protracted conflict, weak institutional capacity, inadequate geographical coverage of justice institutions, and deeply entrenched harmful social and cultural norms. Vulnerable groups — including women, girls, survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees, refugees, persons with disabilities, and older persons — continue to face systemic barriers in accessing justice and protection services. In Central Equatoria State, justice institutions and actors remain overstretched and under-resourced, with limited capacity to effectively respond to increasing cases of SGBV, prolonged pre-trial detention, land and family disputes, serious overcrowding, and other human rights violations within places of detention. In this context, UNDP seeks to strengthen access to justice through engagement with a qualified and registered civil society organization working on legal and human rights issues. The selected CSO/NGO will support victims and survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, women in conflict with the law, and juveniles in and out of the correctional system through the provision of legal aid, legal awareness, through legal clinics alternative dispute resolution (ADR), psychosocial support, and referral services using a coordinated, survivor-centered, and rights-based approach. The Problem Access to justice in South Sudan remains constrained by structural, political, institutional, and socio-cultural factors. These include inadequate justice infrastructure, shortage of qualified legal personnel, underfunded institutions, limited legal awareness, and entrenched harmful customary practices. Additionally, the widespread proliferation of small arms and persistent communal violence continue to exacerbate insecurity and instability across the country. In many parts of South Sudan, formal justice systems remain weak, inaccessible, or non-existent, leaving victims — particularly women, girls, juveniles, and other marginalized populations — without effective legal remedies or protection mechanisms. This project seeks to build upon ongoing legal aid and transitional justice initiatives to strengthen access to formal and community-based justice systems in South Sudan, with a strong emphasis on people-centered justice approaches. The intervention directly responds to the urgent justice, human rights, and protection needs of vulnerable populations, particularly survivors of past and ongoing conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), detainees held without trial, and women and youth with limited access to justice services. The project will support legal aid services, mobile/circuit court processes, referrals from Victim Support Groups (VSGs), and community-level restorative justice initiatives. In addition, justice institutions and actors will receive support to strengthen survivor-centered, trauma-informed, and gender-responsive approaches in the delivery of justice services. 3. Scope of the work The UNDP Acces

What to check before bidding

• Issued by United Nations Development Programme.
• Located in South Sudan.
• Source notice https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=98845 on UNDP.
• Notice published 1 Jun 2026; Tenqual indexed it 2 Jun 2026.
• Deadline listed as 6 Jun 2026.
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