In South Sudan, floods drown hopes

South Sudan, wracked by civil war for over a decade amid other socioeconomic woes, is once again facing a perennial scourge: floods.

When flooding started in 2020, the country was trying to recover from a civil war that had seen hundreds killed and millions displaced, keeping it perpetually on food aid.

Now most areas, especially in Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei states, are submerged, leaving residents fighting hunger, disease outbreaks and animal attacks.

South Sudan is a paradox. Its arable land could feed the entire East African Community but its war, struggling government and flooding make it a basket case. More than nine million people (76 percent of the population) are in need of humanitarian assistance, and another eight million face acute food insecurity.

Heavy rains since May this year, coupled with overflow from Lake Victoria, have caused the Nile River to burst its banks, impacting up to 500,000 people so far. In areas such as Duk County, Jonglei State, where roads are impassable on a goodday, the crisis is worsening by the day. 

“There is serious displacement of people from their settlements, leading to the spread of communicable diseases due to overcrowding. Alongside the overflow of water, diseases like malaria are rampant among the local population,” said Arak Simon, a healthcare worker at Mereng Primary Health Care Centre.

He added that the floods have devastated both livestock and crops, leaving cattle and goats without grazing land and destroying farmlands. “The situation in Duk and Twic East counties is particularly devastating.” 

Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been working in Old Fangak, a severely affected village in Jonglei State, to support flood-affected communities.

“We have provided essential supplies such as plastic sheets, shovels, sandbags, and digging bars to reinforce the dykes around the village and protect the population. However, the situation remains critical, and we are grateful that other partners have joined us in assisting these vulnerable communities,” MSF stated in a recent Facebook post.

"I felt compelled to use my energy as a young person to help protect the most vulnerable—children, women, and the elderly—who have already been displaced by the flood and are now being forced to move to nearby villages across Twic East County," said David Deng, a resident of Twic East in Jonglei State.

"The flood has displaced almost everyone. It's heartbreaking to see what’s happening in my village, and my heart is bleeding."

Tiit Mamar, a senior environmental researcher at the Sudd Institute, describes the ongoing floods as the worst in living memory, blaming them on the El Niño phenomenon.

“Due to heavy downpours in the Great Lakes Region in late 2023 and early 2024, Lake Victoria’s water levels rose again, reaching between 13.44 metres and 13.60 metres,” Tiit explained.

He warned that the floods are likely to cut off supply routes, submerge villages and human settlements, increase the risk of disease outbreaks (especially waterborne diseases and malaria), destroy infrastructure, degrade the environment, and trigger conflicts across South Sudan, as seen in previous flood events.

“The government and partners must take immediate action, including strengthening and expanding dikes in flood-prone areas, installing water-pumping stations, reinforcing road and airstrip embankments, and stocking adequate supplies of food, medicines, fuel, and other essentials. They must also identify high ground for evacuation, engage with host communities, and procure amphibious vehicles for emergency use in flood-affected areas,” Tiit advised.

Flooding has impacted a swathe of South Sudan, submerging not only Unity, Upper Nile, and Jonglei states but also Warrap, Western Equatoria, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, and the Greater Pibor Administrative Area. 

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Unocha), as of September 5, more than 710,000 people across 30 of 78 counties in South Sudan and the Abyei Administrative Area had been affected by floods, causing extensive damage to homes, crops and critical infrastructure, disrupting education and health services, and increasing the risk of disease outbreaks.

Around 2.6 million people were displaced in South Sudan between 2020 and 2022, a result of both conflict and flooding. Stagnant floodwater leads to a rise in water-borne infections such  as cholera and hepatitis E, snakebites, and vector-borne diseases such as malaria. 

As people become malnourished, these diseases become more dangerous. Malnutrition is already a big problem, especially for the 800,000 who have fled into South Sudan from Sudan after the start of conflict there in April 2023.

South Sudan is already contending with the compounded impact of Sudan’s conflict. According to a recent Unocha report, 2.5 million children and women are at risk of acute malnutrition, a figure projected to rise to 2.7 million by December, driven by the Sudan crisis.

Mid-year projections by food security experts warned that the combination of flooding and conflict could result in localised famine between June 2024 and January 2025. 

But the Flood Preparedness and Response Plan for June to December 2024, developed by the Government of South Sudan and humanitarian partners, aims to assist 2.4 million people at an estimated cost of $264 million.

The government in Juba has committed $76 million—28 percent of the total—for immediate mitigation and preparedness efforts. But more support is urgently needed to prevent further devastation and to protect the vulnerable population from the relentless cycle of flooding and displacement.