Flooding in South Sudan: HART’s Assistance

For the third consecutive year since 2019, South Sudan is experiencing severe flooding. Since May, more than 623,000 people have been affected by flooding across eight of the country’s 10 states. The floods have caused widespread devastation to livelihoods, submerging schools, health facilities and thousands of houses and displacing families. Many families have moved to higher ground such as embankments and roads where they are living in the open with minimum cover. In addition to high levels of food insecurity due to the impact of recurring flooding on agriculture, vulnerable persons, including the elderly, people with disabilities and women and girls are faced with added security risks. Meanwhile, the delivery of humanitarian aid has been significantly affected due to infrastructure damage caused by the floods.

Caroline Sekyewa, IRC South Sudan Country Director, said: “Flooding has left hundreds of thousands of people in South Sudan in need of food, water, shelter, hygiene, health services as well as protection services particularly for women, girls and children. For a country in such an unstable condition, the compounded effects of climate change and conflict have devastating consequences for already vulnerable populations. Cases of Hepatitis E in Bentui camp have risen to over 60% from 2019 to 2020, putting already vulnerable populations further at risk. Half a million people are in need of emergency assistance including nutrition, water and sanitation, basic household items, shelter and health services.[i]

HART has been working with partners in South Sudan for over 9 years, providing emergency relief, and education and farming/income-generating activities. We recently supported our partner, the Diocese of Abyei, to deliver vital food assistance to 60 households whose farms were destroyed during the recent devastating floods, leaving them without food to eat and produce to sell. HART funding provided life-saving maize flour to 300 persons.

[i] Sources:

https://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/irc-launches-emergency-response-over-half-million-people-affected-conflict^[1]

https://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/south-sudan-africa-2021-floods-emergency-appeal-mdrss010^[2]

References

1. ^{^} https://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/irc-launches-emergency-response-over-half-million-people-affected-conflict (reliefweb.int)
2. ^{^} https://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/south-sudan-africa-2021-floods-emergency-appeal-mdrss010 (reliefweb.int)