With 300,000 people killed and 1.8 million displaced, the Darfur conflict is one of the deadliest of the past decade – and it is still ongoing. Water scarcity is often cited as an important underlying factor fuelling the conflict, but the issue has hardly been addressed in peace talks.



The Darfur International Conference, “Water for Sustainable Peace”, held on 27-28 June in Khartoum, set out to change this. Over 600 experts and representatives from national and international organisations, and the Sudanese regional and federal government followed the invitation of the organisers – the United Nations (UN), African Union (AU), and the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources. The conference focused on how to develop and utilize natural resources as an instrument of sustainable peace in Darfur, something UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon already advocated for in 2007.



Water supply is rapidly decreasing in Darfur due to a combination of rapid population growth and urbanisation, as well as changing climate which has resulted in an unusually high amount of extremely dry years in the past four decades. These droughts have spurred conflicts between nomads and settlers over grassland for cattle and the use of wells. A vicious cycle began in which conflict led to further environmental degradation and stressed livelihoods which, in turn, caused even more conflict.



At the conference, many experts emphasised that physical water availability is not so much a problem as is the access to and management of the resources. Security threats have stalled progress in this field over the last couple of years. Now it is widely understood that water infrastructure improvement is not a follow-on to a peace agreement, but is a prerequisite to peace.



Hence, the main outcome of the conference was a $1 billion appeal to fund 65 interrelated water system projects in Darfur over the next six years. The appeal – originally scheduled to ask for $1.5 billion – was already answered by several countries: the Sudanese Government committed $216 million plus further tax revenues, and Arab states collectively offered $100 million. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) pledged to continue their contributions of $23 million annually on water projects in Darfur. (Markus Leick)



For further information, please visit the official conference website: http://darfurwaterforpeace.org/

Published in: ECC-Newsletter, 3/2011