South Sudan: South Sudan, Where a Water Crisis is Leading to Child Kidnappings and Rape

Apr 4, 2019 | Bel Trew
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For a split second it looked like the young South Sudanese woman and her baby, swaddled in a cloth-carrier on her back, were taking a breather from the heat of the day under a tree.

But then Mary, 25, a mother herself, took a second look. The two motionless figures were awkwardly propped up against the trunk. The bodies were stiff. Both had died from dehydration.

This is Boma, a state in South Sudan that is suffering from one of the country’s worst water shortages.

The world’s youngest country has been ravaged by a brutal five-year civil war that has killed over 400,000 people and pushed its population to the brink of famine. That conflict nominally ended in September, with South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and the rebel group led by Riek Machar signing a historic peace deal.

But six months on, a simmering humanitarian crisis is threatening to unpick the tense truce.

And water, though often ignored, is now at the heart of a new wave of unrest.