A cease fire agreement was signed between warring factions in South Sudan last week, though it’s not clear exactly the extent to which the fire has actually ceased. In the meantime, thousands of South Sudanese are still seeking refugee in IDP camps throughout the country.
To be precise, there are at least 646,400 IDPs according to the latest count by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs. Of these 646,400 people, at least 76,500 are camped out in UN compounds scattered across the country.
Perhaps the most worrisome statistic is that nearly 300,000 IDPs are living in areas with a hight risk of flooding. Here is a map from OCHA which overlays flood zones with IDP populations in South Sudan. The orange circles are areas that experience a major flood about every 5 years.
Rainy season can start as early as April in South Sudan, so there ought to be a great deal of urgency in either building resilience to flooding in these IDP camps, or resettling IDPs before the rains fall.