The population of Western Equatoria State in South Sudan has been severely affected by the rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army who have been abducting and killing women, men, boys and girls; looting goods and burning down homes. Thousands of people have been displaced as a result of this and forced to live in Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps. On many occasions the IDPs have no other water sources available than unprotected streams or springs, which are not safe to drink from and which cause them to suffer from diarrhoeal diseases, especially in small children.

This year Intersos is drilling 23 boreholes in areas where the LRA affected IDPs have settled, to ensure that the families have safe water available near to their homes. Each borehole can serve up to 500 people with safe drinking water.

In each location where Intersos drills a borehole a Water Management Committee is also formed and trained on how to maintain the borehole to ensure that it keeps supplying the community with safe water. The Water Management Committee is trained on how to do small maintenance, how to collect money from the community to pay for repairs and how to democratically manage the borehole. Intersos put much focus on involving women in the Water Management Committees, since it is women who spend a lot of their time fetching water for their families and as such are heavily affected if the borehole stops working.

Intersos also drills boreholes for schools in IDP affected areas, to ensure that the children can stay in school all day and not miss out on education. If there is no water source in the school, many children are otherwise forced to return home early; and if there is no water source in the community they can sometimes not attend school since they have to help their mothers to fetch water. Intersos trains the children on how to use the hand pump in a proper way so that it will not break due to misuse.

Maria Nilsson,
INTERSOS WASH Coordinator