South Sudan has been ravaged by a brutal five-year civil war that has killed over 400,000 people and pushed its population to the brink of famine. That conflict nominally ended in September, with South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and the rebel group led by Riek Machar signing a historic peace deal. But six months on, a simmering humanitarian crisis is threatening to unpick the tense truce.
And water is now at the heart of a new wave of unrest.
80 per cent of the country has no access to clean water with vital infrastructures destroyed in the fighting. Armed groups have deliberately targeted water infrastructure during the years of fighting as a way of destroying the communities of their enemies. There are scant resources to rebuild these water holes: Oxfam and others say their water programmes are woefully underfunded. Alier Ngongoka, the water authority chair, said only 0.1 per cent of the government budget is allocated for water. South Sudan has no storage facilities to collect and store water.
In Pibor, the regional capital of Boma, local governor John Joseph warns that people have already died in his state over water.
“As the government, we don’t have the capacity to build permanent water infrastructure for people or livestock,” he says. “Every year the violence is getting worse because access to water is deteriorating.”
Also climate change is riving up temperatures resulting in water resources for cattle and agriculture are also in dwindling supply. Seasonal rivers are drying up early, forcing people such as those in cattle herding communities to be on the move, sparking mini local wars. “Water creates real armed conflicts among the pastoral communities, particularly as the dry season is getting longer,” Ngongoka tells The Independent. “We have already seen fighting in areas like greater Jonglei, Akobo and eastern Equatoria.”
Cattle raids are increasing as shepherding communities are on the move looking for water resources or new livestock to replace those lost to thirst, leading to direct conflict with rival ethnic groups.
Officials in South Sudan’s water authority say there is more than enough water to serve the population of just 10 million.
The country is blighted by floods for more than half of the year and is crisscrossed with rivers, including the White Nile, one of the two main tributaries to the Nile. It also straddles three transboundary aquifers. And yet according to Oxfam, which runs several water, sanitation and hygiene programmes (WASH), around 6 million people, or three-quarters of the population, are in need of help getting access to clean water and sanitation. Millions are at risk of waterborne diseases such as typhoid and cholera, which spread unchecked in rural communities that lack access to basic sanitation.
Four million people have been displaced internally or externally. Ngongoka warned that if nothing was done to improve the water crisis, within two years there could be millions more on the move. Rural communities would be forced to move to urban areas, piling pressure on scant resources at a time when South Sudanese refugees are also beginning to return to the country.
Already more than two-thirds of the country, or 7.1 million, rely on aid to survive. Last month, the United Nations said that 1.5 million were on brink of starvation, and tens of thousands are already in famine.
Nachunalan, 43, says, “There has been no change for us since the peace deal was signed. Women are facing thirst, hunger, and violence. When will it end?”
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