Sudan Rapid Post Disaster Needs and Recovery Assessment (Rapid PDNRA)

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In 2020, after months of unusually heavy rains across Central and NorthEastern Africa, Sudan was affected by the worst flooding in over three decades. Since the start of the rainy season in July, large rainfall surpluses had been recorded throughout the Greater Horn of Africa. Heavy rains in the upstream catchments of the Blue Nile (Ethiopia) and the While Nile (South Sudan) resulted in a dramatic increase of Nile water levels. In total, the floods affected all 18 States in Sudan. Areas along the Blue and White Nile as well as the capital Khartoum were heavily flooded, while also non-Nile States, in particular North Darfur, were impacted by heavy local rains and flash floods.
Significant impacts of flooding started in mid-July 2020 when heavy rains and flash floods affected three internally displaced people’s camps in Nyala Town,
South Darfur state. On July 29, the Bout Earth Dam, in the Tadamon locality of Blue Nile state, exceeded its full capacity and collapsed, seriously affecting Bout Town, destroying more than 1,200 houses, and compromising access to water for more than 100,000 people living in the area.
Then, from July 31 to August 1, heavy rain in Khartoum caused further flooding and destruction. By August 12, the number of people affected had exceeded 185,000 with all states except Central Darfur being affected. The situation continued to worsen in the second half of August with the affected population reaching 506,000 by the end of the first week of September and peaking at 875,000 by the end of September.
On September 4, Sudan’s Security and Defence Council declared a three-month, nation-wide state of emergency and designated the country a natural disaster zone. The emergency proclamation was decided in a meeting of the Security and Defence Council chaired by Abdel Fattah alBurhan, chairman of the Transitional Sovereign Council. The Sovereignty Council established a High Flood Coordination Committee to mitigate and address the impact of the floods of 2020. The committee is headed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Development (MoLSD) and includes all relevant ministries, the states, and coordinating authorities as well as local, regional, and international response organizations. The Government’s Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) has activated and is leading a national Flood Task Force to coordinate the response with all partners. Government institutions,
UN agencies, NGO partners, and the private sector are providing life-saving assistance to people affected. Moreover, an Emergency Coordination Operation Centre (EOC) has been established in September to improve the management of the response to emergency incidents through effective coordination between major relevant entities.
This Rapid Post Disaster Needs and Recovery Assessment (RPDNRA) of the Sudan Floods 2020 follows a governmental “Request for Support on Flood Emergency Response”. The request was issued by the Ministry of Labour and Social Development to the World Bank Country Director on October 1, seeking assistance to carry out the assessment of the resultant damage and impacts by the floods. The objective of this RPDNRA is to assess the extent of the flood impact on Sudan and, on the basis of these findings, to produce an actionable and sustainable Recovery Strategy for leveraging targeted flood response and recovery policy/ planning, including mobilizing financial and technical resources. The assessment specifically sets out to: (i) support country-led assessments and initiate recovery planning processes through a coordinated inter-institutional approach;

(ii) evaluate the impact of the floods on infrastructure and assets, service delivery, governance and social processes; (iii) assess needs to address underlying risks and vulnerabilities so as to reduce risk and build back better; (iii) estimate the damage and losses caused by the floods;

(iv) identify recovery and reconstruction needs; (v) develop a recovery strategy; and (vi) provide the basis for mobilizing resources for recovery and reconstruction through local, national and international sources.
The RPNRA has been adapted from the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) methodology to the wider development context of Sudan in a manner to undertake a rapid and concise assessment that links to the existing needs assessments and informs the development agenda in the country. The assessment is organized along sector lines. Given the large scale and the extensive damage of the flood event, the assessment comprises four thematic areas (sectors) with in total sixteen sub-sectors. Each assessment was led by a sector team consisting of specialists from government authorities and development partner agencies.

Source: GFDRR/UN Country Team in Sudan/World Bank