Peace flows from water
June 22, 2011
The conflict in western Sudan's Darfur region erupted more than eight years ago, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives and displacing an estimated 2 million people from their homes. Disputes over scarce water supplies and grazing land between black African farmers and Arab pastoralist communities were largely responsible for triggering the war.
Lack of access to water remains one of the major drivers of the ongoing conflict in Darfur. An international conference in Khartoum at the end of June will focus on the critical issue of water and how water's equitable use and management can help build peace in the troubled region.
"Water is one of the main root causes of this conflict," Mohamed Yonis, deputy joint special representative of the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) told Deutsche Welle.
"There is a need to address this issue and we do believe that water will serve as an instrument for peace," he added.
Water is life
UNAMID has been in Darfur for three and a half years. Yonis said scarce water resources, if they are well managed and distributed equitably, can ensure sustainable peace for the people in Darfur.
"Water, we believe, is life," he said. "We believe it could contribute to the initiatives that the UN is making in terms of trying to reach peace with the people of Darfur."
UN-mediated peace negotiations for the Darfur region are ongoing in Doha but a political solution remains elusive. The UN is hoping for better results from a water conference it is organizing jointly with UNAMID and the government of Sudan at the end of June.
The conference will seek $1.5 billion (1.04 billion euros) from donors to support 56 water projects over the next six years. These projects will focus on rebuilding the water infrastructure, which has been devastated by conflict and neglect. They will introduce new technologies and systems for managing water, preparing for drought and helping farmers adapt to climate change.
In the wealthiest countries, one person uses nearly 400 liters (105 US gallons) of water per day, according to United Nations statistics. In Darfur, the average person has less than nine liters per day for drinking, washing and other purposes.
Drought complications
Scarce supplies make providing water in the Sahel region, which stretches across Africa along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, a difficult problem, said Sudan Program Manager for the UN Environment Program, Robin Bovey. He said managing water resources is a massive undertaking, which cannot be done in isolation.
"We are presently setting up drought committees in camps," Bovey said. "There will be droughts that occur again. This is just something that happens on a cyclical basis. But, where you have population shifts, you have to make sure that people are prepared."
Peace requires water in a desert where cyclical droughts mean finding water is difficult. But the problem is complicated further by water quality, according to Nils Kastberg, UNICEF representative for Sudan.
"In the case of UNICEF, obviously, the biggest cause of mortality for children now in Darfur is diarrhea," he said. "We need to address it quite urgently precisely through the provision of better quality of water."
Getting access to that water requires peace, Kastberg said, adding that peace can best be achieved on the local level.
"If we dig a well and that leads to different groups of people fighting over access to that water, than we are contributing to conflict," he said.
"Instead, we can use the access to water as a way of establishing dialogue between different groups, so that through that dialogue we can provide, for instance, access to water, but at the same time get the dialogue going that is so needed, then we are constructing peace from the local level," Kastberg added.
Official involvement
But aid agencies agree these peace initiatives ultimately will lead nowhere without cooperation from the Sudanese government. They are urging the government to provide services to all people in Darfur and to grant them freedom of movement so they can distribute essential relief and care.
Unfortunately, the government consistently denies access to people who are considered to of the incorrect political alignment, said Mark Simmons, country director of FAR Sudan,
"We have been stressing that there needs to be complete access and freedom of movement to all populations," he said. "Otherwise, you end up risking using water as a means to promote a particular political agenda. That is something that we would be keen to avoid."
Aid agencies said they believe the best prospects for peace lie with local communities, not with the central government. Local populations, the aid group said, are tired of fighting and want to trade their goods and to have access to markets and water.
This, the organizations said, is prompting many communities to conclude their own peace agreements. If this process grows and spreads from village to village, they say these local agreements could translate into a significant regional-wide peace for Darfur.
Author: Lisa Schlein (sjt)
Editor: Sean Sinico