Amidst South Sudan’s Floods, Alternative Farming Keeping Girls and Women Afloat

Bentiu, South Sudan– The morning chaos is the least of her worries. Teresa Nyangoang Ley, 56, rises at dawn to catch a moment of peace before sunrise heralds the frenzied pace of people going about their daily activities inside the 225-hectare, flood-ravaged internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in South Sudan’s city of Bentiu.

She follows the same old routine that she mindlessly navigates through each day – filling up empty jerry cans with drinking water, preparing the charcoal stove to warm the leftover food from the previous night, and sharing a light meal with her children before they depart for school.

The possibility of running out of millet and firewood is her biggest worry.

Not least because she is reminded to replenish the supply but the thought of having to forage for food and collecting firewood some 30 kilometers south of the camp sends harrowing images of women and girls who have been harassed, raped, and abandoned to die in the bushes over the years.   

“It’s scary out there. Violence against women and girls was a common occurrence during the civil war five years ago and until now it is still happening in our communities. I don’t even feel completely safe when I am with other women,” she said.

The fear of sexual and gender-based violence is even more palpable among women living in South Sudan villages. They are traditionally expected to take care of household chores like gathering firewood and fetching water, and who rely on tending to their gardens to produce food.

Now, the women in the camp move in groups whenever they go out to fetch firewood or water as a safety precaution.

“We have an arrangement with the security forces from the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) to accompany us. I have learned to put my faith in the idea that there is strength in numbers, so we won’t be harmed,” says Teresa.

But this is not enough to quell the danger and distress these women and girls are subjected to each time they venture out into the woods.

“Before the floods, we used to have land to cultivate, and the fruit trees were in abundance that we didn’t see the need to travel long distances to search for food and firewood,” she said.

After four straight years of severe flooding since 2019, much of South Sudan’s Unity State is now submerged under water but nowhere is this more pronounced than in the town of Bentiu which hosts the largest IDP camp in the country. The once vast swathe of rich agricultural land has turned into a floodplain and left trees rotten, forcing families to find food and fuel in far flung areas.

“We would receive reports of women who boarded canoes to salvage rotting branches of tree stumps out in the marshes and went missing, and of girls who sustained injuries walking barefoot to obtain something to eat. The threat is real and present, and there needs to be a solution,” said James Ker Kuol Lam, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM) assistant for youth outreach.

Things have been recently looking up for Teresa and 41 other women and girls.  IOM is piloting an alternative livelihood programme to address food scarcity and the threat of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) through the Women’s Participation Project (WPP).

Under the Global CCCM Cluster, the WPP provides a platform for women and girls to identify solutions to issues they are facing and to enable meaningful participation across all levels of camp life.

The solution was right in front of them all this time – the hundreds of water hyacinths - an invasive and fast-growing aquatic plant that flourishes in South Sudan due to nearly four years of massive flooding.   Often viewed as problematic in many parts of the world, the plant is providing a welcome relief for thousands of women in South Sudan as climate change takes its toll in the country.

“As climate change is becoming more of a reality for much of South Sudan’s communities, our understanding of its correlation with gender-based violence is getting clearer,” said Francois Guillaume ‘FG’ Jaeck, IOM CCCM ad-interim Programme Coordinator.

“What we have here is evidence that climate change is a threat multiplier that manifests itself through conflicts brought on by competing resources, and as illustrated by the fear from women and girls in the camp, the phenomenon exacerbates exposure to GBV and other protection risks as a consequence of food insecurity,” he added.

Teresa, who has also just been appointed as the new chairperson of the camp’s Women Forum is hopeful. She believes that when these water hyacinths can sustain the growth of vegetables, there will be no need for women and girls to risk their lives to forage for food ever again out in the bushes.

“We learned from one of our human-centered design workshops that these water hyacinths thrive well in tropical climates and can serve as a fertile seedbed for vegetables,” she said, seeming ecstatic about the prospect of better times ahead.

“The floating garden will certainly give us peace of mind.”

Partner organization World Food Programme (WFP) is funding a similar project to turn these aquatic plants into biofuels to address the issue of insufficient supply of firewood in the camp.

“WPP is a promising programme that can have multiple dividends for the IDPs, host communities, and local authorities to reap in the long term – chief among them are skills enhancement, literacy, financial independence, and reduced SGBV cases,” said IOM’s FG.

Back in the camp, the mother of five wades into waist-deep, murky waters to gather water hyacinths, handing them to her colleagues to load into a waiting truck. The day’s collection will be delivered to the men building the rafts.

Teresa and the rest took their leave and headed for the camp library to catch their digital learning sessions – another of the many activities that WPP offers women participants to equip them with literacy and numeracy skills and build their self-confidence.  

Short bursts of laughter filled the room before it trailed off into silence. Just like how Teresa relishes dawn. Serene and still.