Aid workers and the people of South Sudan fear they face further devastating flooding. Photographer Peter Caton has been documenting this unprecedented human tragedy for Action Against Hunger
Report by Susan Martinez
In South Sudan, millions of people endure natural disasters, conflict and political instability. Life for the citizens of the world’s youngest and most troubled nation can change suddenly and dramatically, yet for three years in a row, there has been one awful constant in this landlocked, strife-riven country – extreme floods.
According to the UN, almost one million people, nearly a tenth of the total population, were affected by the floods in 2022, which started in May. About two-thirds of the country was swamped. Rising waters have swept away homes and livestock, forcing tens of thousands to flee, and inundated large swathes of farmland, worsening an already dire food emergency.
South Sudan’s refugee crisis is the worst in Africa, with more than 2.3 million South Sudanese refugees fleeing intercommunal violence to neighbouring countries and an estimated 2.2 million people internally displaced. It, in turn, hosts more than 340,000 refugees fleeing yet more violence in those neighbouring countries.
Since South Sudan gained independence in 2011, it has been wracked by civil war; a peace deal signed in 2018 has done little to stop the violence. The UN relief agency UNHCR estimates that severe food insecurity affects 60 per cent of the population. Food prices have soared and the local currency has been devalued, exacerbating a protracted humanitarian crisis.
The Sudd Wetland covers more than 90,000 square kilometres of South Sudan. It’s Africa’s largest wetland and one of the most extensive freshwater ecosystems on Earth. The region has long coped with seasonal flooding, soaking up the overflow from Lake Victoria via the White Nile and the runoff from the surrounding highlands in Ethiopia and the Central African Republic.
‘I have been throwing water over the dyke all day. I can’t stand up anymore,’ says 70-year-old Nyakoang Mayieh
A protracted La Niña event, the cold phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation in the eastern Pacific, has resulted in the warmest surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean in 60 years, causing record rainfall in eastern Africa. The extreme scale of the floods this causes each summer further inundates the saturated landscape of Southern Sudan. Entire villages, such as Puor in Fangak county, have disappeared underwater, and Bentiu, a state capital, has become an island surrounded by floodwaters. All roads in and out are impassable, and only boats and the airstrip serve as lifelines for aid to reach 460,000 people already displaced by both flooding and conflict.
Refugee camps, often on land lower than the current water level, are protected by hastily constructed dykes.
Elderly South Sudanese who survived the wars of independence and subsequent civil wars haven’t seen anything like these floods. Mary Nyamat, 83, told us: ‘The climate has changed from the years when I was young because we have never experienced floods like this before. What we are experiencing now is horrible. We are suffering from hunger, and we didn’t before. For old people, it’s horrible. It’s hard moving in this water; we don’t know where to sleep or what to eat. We are in God’s hands.’
By 2021, hundreds of thousands of people had gone without growing crops for two years because the farmland lay submerged beneath stagnant flood water. Using the last of their savings, or by selling their last goat, many families invested in seeds to grow vegetables and staple grains such as sorghum and maize, only to have the floods destroy the crops last year.
Nyadiang Gak, a mother who has twice fled with her children from flooding villages, said: ‘Now it is time to harvest sorghum, but we couldn’t even plant it… I planted maize next to my home, but when the second flood came, it destroyed it and I didn’t even get to harvest it… Now we are hungry.’
‘If a cow dies today, we will die of hunger,’ says Nyabaag Bamgout
The villages in the Sudd were traditionally built next to a river or lake on one side and on the other a dirt road. Now villages such as Old Fangak and Paguir have been transformed into water worlds, with people visiting neighbours and relatives by canoe.
Dozens of canoes have started making daily four-hour trips between the villages to deliver goods.
Boreholes and latrines have been submerged, contaminating water sources and risking disease outbreaks. According to Médecins Sans Frontières, the stagnant water has contributed to a rise in malaria and water-borne illnesses, extreme malnutrition, more frequent snake bites and an increase in diabetes. The UN also reports repeated measles outbreaks.
The dykes that protect the camps for the displaced were erected by the UN, the South Sudan government and the inhabitants themselves. People are working around the clock with pumps, buckets, excavators and heavy machinery to keep the water at bay and prevent the dykes from collapsing.
‘It all started in June and because of that we couldn’t harvest our crops. They were all washed away with the floods’, says Nyayu Thang
The need for food, shelter, water and sanitation supplies are surging as stocks of essential items begin to run out. In Maban, in Upper Nile state, trucks carrying food and much-needed relief items couldn’t reach the Doro Refugee Camp, home to 75,000 refugees, as roads were blocked by water. Food supplies were airlifted in, but the UNHCR fears that it’s running out of cash to keep such efforts going.
Charlotte Hallqvist, external relations officer at UNHCR in South Sudan, said at the end of last year: ‘South Sudan is one of our most underfunded crises, having received less than half of the US$214.8 million needed this year. Underfunding is preventing UNHCR from stepping up support to internally displaced people, including through flood response and mitigation.
‘The most challenging thing on this island is mosquitoes. From sunset until the next morning you have to be inside the mosquito net because there are too many,’ says Yoak Chatin
‘Without sufficient funds, UNHCR is prioritising life-saving support,’ she continued. ‘People who have fled their homes need essentials such as shelter, blankets, plastic sheets, nets, containers for water, cooking utensils and hygiene and sanitary kits. It is also crucial to continue support for peace-building projects and community-based interventions aimed at child protection and reducing gender-based violence. With global attention elsewhere, South Sudan’s protracted and chronically underfunded crisis needs urgent support.’
Relief workers and the people of South Sudan are bracing themselves for what the rains will bring this year. Water temperatures in the Indian Ocean are still high as the much-awaited El Niño weather conditions have yet to arrive. More flooding seems inevitable.
‘I am destroying this flooded house so I can make a new home in a dry place for my children,’ says Nyachuana Lok
‘We cannot evacuate and go to another place. We have to protect our homes with a dyke,’ says Nyanong Chanchan
‘We have no food, so that is why we collect the water lilies,’ say Bol Kek, 45
‘We normally grow sorghum and maize in a dry place. But now I grow this rice so that my children can eat until the time that God takes this water away from us,’ says James Wuor
