South Sudan Protection Cluster Flood Preparedness Plan and Guidance

South Sudan is a country prone to severe flooding, which in turn often has a devastating impact, causing mid or long-term displacement and uprooting of communities, exposure to protection, livelihood, and health risks as well as inter-communal conflicts.

Floods destroy homes, limit access to healthcare, water, and sanitation, and isolate communities. Flooding disrupts essential services, including those provided by humanitarian actors, and worsens existing and already high protection risks in the country. Apart from resident communities directly affected by the rising waters, communities of returnees and internally displaced people (IDPs) are especially vulnerable to risks brought about by secondary displacement.

Among those risks, in a flood scenario, the Protection Cluster and its Areas of Responsibility (AoRs) are especially concerned with risks affecting men, women, girls, and boys (such as gender-based violence, family separations, negative psychosocial impacts, restriction of movement, and destruction of property and livelihood opportunities). Exposure to unexploded ordnance and support mechanisms for the affected population especially, the elderly and/or people with disabilities. In some areas of the country are very real threats to the security and safety of people displaced due to floods in South Sudan.