The Case of Sudan


 Physical and Human Causes of Water Stress:

Sudan is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and if you revisit my previous blog, you will be able to see that Sudan, amongst many other African countries, is living under the conditions of being water stressed. According to the 2020 Global Climate Risk Report, North Kordofan is characterised by low levels of rainfall, extreme temperatures and drought (GIWPS, 2021). Both rain-fed agriculture and pastoralism supports the livelihoods of over 80% of the population in North Kordofan (GIWPS, 2021) but due to the intensifying impacts of climate change, resources such as fresh water are being stressed. Although climate change is a contributory factor that is impacting the supply of water resources, water demand is expected to exceed water supply by 2030 (GIWPS, 2021). Hence, population growth is a plausible explanation for water depletion as more water would be required to sustain livelihoods and households.

Figure 1: Khartoum Abdulrahman Al Duman in her farm in the Darfur region of Sudan. United Nations (2022).

Land and Water Rights:

Women in North Kordofan play a vital role in food production and water provision. Women contribute around 75% of monthly agricultural income through the harvesting of food and cash crops such as millet and sesame (GIWPS, 2021). This statistic is reminiscent of what I have discussed earlier, where households are headed by predominantly women due to migration of men to urban areas. Despite women being responsible for households and farming, power rights are given to men due to customs and patriarchal culture. Access to land rights can only be given to women through a male relative member and therefore highlights the social status of women in communities, where their empowerment is required in order for them to have better socio-economic productivity. Proprietorship would enable women to have access to irrigation as access to irrigation is often dictated by one's land rights and since women are deprived of this, this leads to fewer rights over water resources which impacts on women's smallholder farms. It was found that reducing the gender gap would potentially increase agricultural yields which can provide food for an additional 100-150 million people (United Nations, 2013).  

What Should be Done?

Gender discrimination and unequal power relations must be addressed in order to include more women in water management, for example through the division of equal land access rights. However, the division of equal rights work hand in hand with cultural reforms, as patriarchal culture tends to dictate who is given power and who is responsible for most of the work. Gender issues must be integrated in policies to include more women in water and agricultural management, and this can only happen if there is a political will to change cultural norms. 

 












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Valuing Women's Work in Africa

Image
Highlighting the Issue: Water Collection Figure 1: A woman from carrying water from a well in Northern Kenya, Furlong (2016). Women in Africa are critical figures in the collection of water, but their work is still heavily undervalued. We tend to see images and videos of women collecting water and travelling long distances with a baby attached to their back on TV and on social media, but do we actually think about the implications for women's development? Do we understand the problems that women experience on a daily basis? We often take water for granted, as most of us can just get water from a working tap or buy a bottle of water at our local convenience store, but I want us to understand the struggles that women in Africa have to battle in their everyday lives.  Some Stats for You: Did you know that women and girls spend over 200 million hours collecting water? (UNICEF, 2016).  200 million hours amounts to 22,800 years (UNICEF, 2016) , and so imagine how much women could have ac
Read more

Gender-based Violence

                                                                 Introduction: Previously, I discussed how water collection steals the time of women and girls to participate in the labour market. This blog is a follow up on the previous blog post where I will discuss the dangers and issues surrounding water collection that women experience. There are 2 main gender-based violences and these are: 1. Experiencing sexual assault when fetching water and when using public spaces. 2. Experiencing domestic violence when returning home by male counterparts due to insufficient water and long periods away from the household. The Risk of Sexual Assault: On a daily basis, women risk their lives to collect water. Following the collection of water, women are forced to walk home with a forty pound Jerry Can (charity:water, 2022)  whilst traversing dangerous terrains, which can result in attacks and sexual assault. This occurs primarily in the middle of the night or in the early morning, where some wom
Read more

Water Management

  Gender Mainstreaming: " The number of women representatives in water projects and boards should not be the sole goal, neither the ultimate objective of gender mainstreaming. Having women in planning bodies alone doesn’t guarantee that gender issues are mainstreamed; it is  a much wider process. The presence of women in water projects won’t radically  influence the impact of the project if the  women have not been included in the design phase and if the projects have not integrated all gender needs and set objectives that are gender-sensitive and  beneficial for all "   (UNEP-DHI, 2021). Gender mainstreaming is often misunderstood, and as articulated in the quote above, it is much more than creating equality between men and women, including more women in development projects and increasing the number of women in leadership roles. Gender mainstreaming involves "the integration of gender perspectives in preparation, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of pol
Read more