South Sudan: Floods affect over 1M people since July

ANKARA

Floods caused by heavy rains in South Sudan have affected more than a million people since July, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Thursday.

“An estimated 1,034,000 people have been affected by floods since July. Jonglei State is the worst affected (404,000 people),” read a report, released by OCHA South Sudan on behalf of the Inter-Cluster Coordination Group, which covers the period from July 1 to Nov. 17.

“Of those people affected, some 481,000 were estimated to have displaced,” the report said.

The heavy rains left widespread crop and property damage in the affected regions, it said.

“Abnormally heavy rainfall from July to date has led to overflows of the rivers Nile, Pibor, Sobat, Lol and other rivers as well as inland flooding, mainly in the eastern and central parts of South Sudan,” the report added.

The affected people are in urgent need of food, livelihood support, emergency shelter as well as non-food items (ES/NFI), water, sanitation and hygiene, health and protection services.

September saw a host of global environmental disasters, including floods in landslides in Vietnam as well as wildfires in the US and Ukraine.

"Over the past decade, 83% of all disasters were caused by extreme weather and climate-related events such as floods, storms, and heatwaves," said a report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) -- titled World Disasters Report 2020: Come Heat, or High Water.

Together, these disasters killed more than 410,000 people and affected a staggering 1.7 billion people and thus struggle to protect people from the aggravating effects of climate change, according to the report.