Desperation and water shortages in Jamam refugee camp
April 26th, 2012 by Pauline Ballaman Posted in Refugees/IDPs, South Sudan, Sudan, Water/sanitationSouth Sudan’s Jamam refugee camp is in a desperate situation. All day Oxfam trucks water from the very few working boreholes in or near the camp to tanks close to the road. Women wait in the heat for up to four hours twice a day, next to their long queues of buckets and jerry cans. Men with sticks and whips police the lines. Fights break out all the time. No one has to ask why. There is simply not enough water and we are running out of options and we are running out of time.
This is the daily struggle that is the human face of peace failing in the Sudans. Nearly 37,000 refugees have fled to Jamam camp since last year, escaping the ongoing conflict in Sudan’s Blue Nile state. Like a cruel reminder of the conflict that the refugees fled, unidentified Antonovs — the kind of planes that bombed their villages in Blue Nile — flew over Jamam three times in the past few weeks. In a panic, refugees ran and sought safety in holes in the ground. You can read more about the growing crisis in Jamam on CNN.