Medair South Sudan @ 30

By Steve

This year marks 30 years since Medair first started working in what is now South Sudan.  Back in 1992, it was Southern Sudan and Medair was responding to the needs of a population suffering from a civil war fought between the notionally Christian south and the Muslim north.  Move forwards 30 years and it is a land that won independence, but has not enjoyed many years of peace as a result.

The idea of an “emergency” lasting for 30 years is hard to fathom.  The circumstances may be a little different now, but the basic needs are, one suspects, still rather ominously the same.  When we think about humanitarian emergencies we tend to think of places where armed conflict or natural disaster have disrupted the normal way of life for people, where infrastructure is damaged, or where people are forced to leave their lives of relative comfort for a life of uncertainty.  Maybe these last for a few months or years; enough time to restore some semblance of order once the crisis has passed.

Imagine a person involved in a car accident.  Initially they may require emergency treatment, but then hopefully they can leave the hospital and continue their recovery at home.

South Sudan is different, partly because there hasn’t just been one crisis but many.  But also because it’s never really had a chance to get off the life-support machine in the first place.

As a country, South Sudan is ranked number 191 out of 191 on the United Nations’ Human Development Index.

By this measure, it’s the least developed nation on the planet.

What it needs is development - jobs, schools, healthcare etc. - but investment in these areas are hampered by crises such as civil war, inter-communal conflict, flooding, etc.  So it’s in a perpetually fragile situation, moving from one crisis to the next, without much opportunity to move forwards, and hence, a 30 year emergency.

At times it can be difficult to see a way past a time when humanitarian agencies like Medair are no longer required, and the worry can be that their very presence is not actually helping in the long run.

But some of the work Medair is doing is, in a small way, trying to develop capacity within the communities, to lessen the need for us to come back the next time something goes wrong – ultimately to make ourselves surplus to requirements.

For instance, in Renk, Medair have constructed and currently support a number of Surface Water Treatment systems.  These turn murky, unsafe river water into clean, chlorinated water that is perfectly safe to drink. When these “SWAT”s are first set up, they typically use diesel-powered pumps to suck the water from a river or lake and transfer it into a settlement tank.  A second pump is used to transfer the clean water into a storage tank.  This isn’t a problem at first, but when the time comes for Medair to leave, it can be challenging to hand over the system to the community because often they either can’t afford the buy the diesel, or it isn’t even available.

So Medair have started to install solar panels and electric pumps that don’t rely on diesel.

It’s not a perfect solution – solar systems do need maintenance from time to time, and there is still a requirement to source the chemicals necessary to treat the water – but it’s step in the direction of giving communities greater ability to look after their own needs.

In Leer and Pibor, the WASH teams have been rehabilitating handpumps that are located in areas that are prone to flooding during the rainy season, so that they can still be used to get clean drinking water, even if the surrounding area is flooded.

Handpumps draw water up from deep in the ground where it is protected from contamination from the surface and is therefore safe to drink.  However, if the pump becomes submerged by flooding, the flood water will get down into the well, polluting it.

Medair have been building up raised platforms around existing pumps, and installing a new pump a few feet higher off the ground.  If the floodwaters come, they will (hopefully) not rise so high that the pump is submerged and therefore, even though it is still difficult to access, when they do people can be sure to get safe drinking water.

The community are trained how to maintain and care for the handpump, so that it is less likely to breakdown, and when it does, they have the ability to repair it themselves.

In these small ways, our emergency response is also developing capacity in the community.  It is a very small step, and there’s a lot more that could (and should) be done, but every long journey begins with those first steps.

We did not 'celebrate' our 30th Anniversary as such, but we did mark the good work that has been done over the years. And we hope that organisations like Medair will not be needed in the same way over the next 30 years.