In recent years, torrential rains and rising water levels in Lake Victoria, one of Africa’s Great Lakes, have created a vast swampy expanse of floodwater, impacting people’s lives, homes, and livelihoods downstream in South Sudan—one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to climate change. This rainy season, up to 3.3 million people in the country face potentially unprecedented floods on the horizon, with lives and livelihoods on the line.
Cutting through South Sudan is the White Nile, a tributary of the Nile River that flows from Lake Victoria all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Though the White Nile and surrounding river networks provide important natural water sources, they also pose a threat during the rainy season, when floodwaters can destroy houses, crops, and livestock, and compromise people’s access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities. As of 2023, an estimated 5.4 million people live in flood-affected areas. Hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee.
“It was very difficult to leave because I was alone with my five children and my house was completely flooded,” said Veronika, who is among those who fled. “I had to use jerrycans and plastic sheets to help my children move in the floods. I thought we would not make it [out] alive.”
A few miles from Veronika’s hometown lies Tuoyluak, a village near the White Nile. There, Nyachany and her six children spent two years at the mercy of rising floodwaters. She had resisted fleeing, but this year she had to.
“My property was completely flooded,” Nyachany said as she cradled her eight-month-old daughter Wangnen. “We made makeshift beds with sticks and raised them so high to keep the children safe.” Soon, as the waters continued to rise, the family ran out of sticks that were tall enough. Since then, the town's school and clinic have slowly disappeared under the floodwaters.
Life on a drowning island
After a four-day journey through the floods, Veronika, Nyachany, and their children found safety in the Bentiu camp for internally displaced people in Unity State, Rubkona County. Surrounded by creeping floodwaters, the overcrowded camp hosts more than 100,000 people, trapped on a small island secured by dikes.
Many of the people living in Bentiu camp arrived between 2013 and 2018, fleeing conflict. Since then, floods have ravaged hometowns, leaving them with no place to return to after seeking shelter from a civil war.
Elizabeth and her seven children arrived in Bentiu camp in 2014 and live a few shelters away from Nyachany and Veronika’s families. “During the war, some men broke into my property to steal my cattle,” Elizabeth said. “With no livelihood and worried about my children, we had no choice but to flee." She recalled the muffled sound of gunfire echoing down the road as she ran with her children, bullets whirring around them. Many people fell along the way, including her husband, who was killed. Elizabeth was shot in the leg.
That day, Elizabeth's life was forever changed. “If there were no flooding, I could go back now that it’s safer and I could cultivate crops,” she explained. “Now I am desperate and I have no plan to leave the camp because my children are going to school. Outside, there is no school left because of the flooding.”
Recurrent flooding in South Sudan has made rural areas more vulnerable, increasing the risk of food insecurity by reducing agricultural productivity. Most people living in Bentiu camp rely on humanitarian assistance to survive.
Nyachany, Veronika, and Elizabeth each expressed their sadness at not being able to provide their children with enough food. “We eat once a day—only lunch, but no breakfast or dinner,” said Elizabeth. “For seven people, we get 50kg [about 110lbs] of sorghum [a cereal grain], one liter of oil, and a small amount of lentils from the World Food Program. I really depend on it. I don’t know if my children are malnourished or not, but what I know is that their weight has reduced more and more."
Flood-affected areas like Rubkona are experiencing severe malnutrition levels exacerbated by limited access to food and livelihoods. From September to November 2023, an estimated 15,000 people in Rubkona County were affected by famine.
Why floods make women more vulnerable
Women rely heavily on local natural resources for their livelihood, particularly in rural areas where they are responsible for providing food and water for their families. Flooding can have a disproportionate impact on women, who often carry out labor-intensive tasks like farming, fetching water and firewood, and caring for children.
Veronika, alone with her children and with limited resources, cultivates a small plot of land in the camp. “In my previous life, I was cultivating pumpkins, maize, cucumber, okra, and watermelon,” she said. “In the camp there is not enough space to cultivate [crops] as we are surrounded by floods. Here we can just cultivate a small area of okra and beans. “It’s not enough.”
Floods have destroyed all the trees around the camp, forcing Veronika to travel miles to collect firewood. At 6 a.m., she takes a boat to a remote forest, and it's only when night falls that she returns to the shelter with some firewood that she sells to buy food. But Veronika won’t let her daughters do the same. “Women and girls are especially vulnerable to climate change,” she explains, “especially when they have to go for wood in the forest far from home because there is nothing nearby and they are assaulted.”
For now, Veronika, Nyachany, and Elizabeth are focusing on providing a brighter future for their children, but the three single mothers all confessed to having lost hope.
“The government and decision-makers could help us,” Veronika said. “They should do it because we already have enough troubles with the internal conflicts, and climate change could be the tipping point, especially for women and children.”
Unfortunately, the rains are expected to intensify from July to October this year. Recent forecasts indicate an increased likelihood of above-normal rainfall and large volumes of water being released from Lake Victoria into the Nile River system due to heavy rains driven by El Niño. This could likely cause peak flooding on a scale unprecedented in the last century, potentially affecting up to 3.3 million people in South Sudan.
For displaced mothers, as well as the millions who have fled due to war and climate shocks in South Sudan, the threat of climate inaction is real.
