On the occasion of the Wilson Center's 50th anniversary, its Environmental Change and Security Program and nine co-sponsoring programs convened experts on November 28 from government, the NGO sector, and academia for a comprehensive look at the first year of the U.S. Government Global Water Strategy and new research and practice on water, peace, and conflict.
The changing nature of humanitarian crises has placed high expectations on the aid system, which is now called on to simultaneously address multiple issues, sectors, and types of vulnerability. This is especially true in protracted crises where practitioners must strike a balance between known, evidence-based interventions, and those that address the longer-term public health and WASH needs over a prolonged period of time.
Jenga Jamaa II (JENGA II – "Building the strength of communities II" ) was a $50 million five-year Developmental Food Assistance Program (DFAP) funded by USAID’s Office of Food for Peace (FFP).
This report is an evaluation of Jenga Jamaa, a Multi-Year Assistance Program carried out over a three-year period (June 2008–May 2011) and implemented by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) International. It ipartnered with Africare under a cooperative agreement to reduce food insecurity among vulnerable populations in Fizi and Uvira territories in South Kivu province of the eastern Democratic Republic Congo (DRC).
About 90 percent of USAID’s water priority countries are conflict-affected or fragile. Last year, over 60 million people around the world were affected by more than 280 natural disasters. Effective water resource management is complex in times of peace and prosperity. Effective water resource management in a time of crisis—whether war or disaster—can mean the difference between building resilience or compounding tragedy.
About 90 percent of USAID’s water priority countries are conflict-affected or fragile. Last year, over 60 million people around the world were affected by more than 280 natural disasters. Effective water resource management is complex in times of peace and prosperity. Effective water resource management in a time of crisis—whether war or disaster—can mean the difference between building resilience or compounding tragedy.
West Africa’s Sahel is an arid band stretching 1.1 million square miles from Senegal to Chad with limited annual rainfall. This zone has a combustible mix of deeply rooted chronic poverty, food insecurity, recurrent drought, scattered conflict, and violent extremism that drives the same vulnerable communities into crisis year after year.
In August 2013, USAID requested the WISE-Lebanon program conduct a rapid assessment of the communities served by the Water Establishments (WE) and directly affected by the Syrian refugee influx in order to identify, develop, recommend, and potentially implement integrated interventions.
In times of crisis, children face many dangers: They are forced from home, separated from family, deprived of food, barred from school, and exposed to exploitation and violence. In crises involving armed conflict, children are threatened by injury and death. But bullets and bombs are not always the deadliest threats to a child’s life. In protracted conflicts, children younger than 15 are, on average, nearly three times more likely to die from diarrheal disease linked to unsafe water and sanitation than violence directly linked to conflict and war.
Water is essential to the health of individuals, the vitality of communities, and the stability of nations. This animated short from the Wilson Center and USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation celebrates how working together to ensure safe and sufficient water supplies not only increases the resilience of communities, but also helps build peace in war-torn nations.
