USAID/OTI Sudan Hot Topics December 2006
Providing clean drinking water to local communities in southern Sudan
The overarching goal of the USAID/OTI Sudan program is to strengthen Sudanese confidence and capacity to address the causes and consequences of political marginalization, violence, and instability that has consumed the country for nearly 50 years.
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| USAID/OTI collaborates with the State Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Urban Construction in Wau town, South Sudan to provide clean drinking water to the local population. |
Working within the context of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), the OTI Sudan program focuses on promoting the emergence of responsive and effective civil authorities; peaceful dialogue within and among communities; fostering the emergence of an active civil society; increasing the availability of independent information; and protecting vulnerable populations from grave human rights violations and related abuses.
The influx of returnees during Sudan's dry season has increased tensions over scarce water resources in the former garrison town of Wau, the capital of Western Bahr el Ghazal State, South Sudan. The tensions have threatened to put in jeopardy the successful implementation of the recently-signed Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended twenty-one years of conflict between north and south Sudan. A recent collaboration between USAID"s Office of Transition Initiatives and the civil authorities, however, increased access to water and thus staved off conflict among three-quarters of the local population, which likely exceeds 450,000 people.
The combination of an increased number of returnees with decreased availability of water during the dry months, when many returnees arrive from North Sudan, has intensified the pressure on local civil authorities to provide clean drinking water to the population of Wau. Through its in-kind grants mechanism, OTI has filled an important gap in the State Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Urban Construction's Water, Environment, and Sanitation (WES)'s initiatives to increase access to clean water by supplying submersible pumps, generators, water tanks and water pipes. With this equipment, OTI is enabling local civil authorities in Wau town and surrounding areas to drill numerous hand pump boreholes and to dig 11 deep wells that are providing water to IDPs, returnees, and settled community members, who currently have no clean water supply.
The access to water has demonstrated tangible peace dividends to the population of Wau by increasing public confidence in the ability of local authorities to meet basic needs during this key period of social, economic, and political transition in South Sudan.
For further information, please contact:
In Washington, D.C: : Victoria Rames, Program Manager, Tel: (202) 712-4899, vrames@usaid.gov
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