Integrated Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Practices Enhance Humanitarian Service Delivery in a Conflict-Affected Area: Darfur, Sudan

Résumé

Access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) remains one of the most persistent gaps facing internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees and host communities in protracted conflict settings. This study was conducted in July 2021, across six sites: Bilel and Al Radom (South Darfur State) and Hassa Hissa, Hamedia and Khamsa dageiga and Rokero (Central Darfur State). The study examines the performance of a WASH component implemented by NGOS in five camps and settlements in Central and South Darfur State, Sudan. Using a mixed-methods post-intervention evaluation design household knowledge-attitudes-practices (KAP) surveys (n = 320 household), key informant interviews; focus group discussions, facility observations and secondary programme data. The study assessed water access, water quality, sanitation coverage, hygiene behavior and the sustainability of community-managed infrastructure. Findings show that access to water rose from 174,403 to 191,121 beneficiaries, with 90.5% of the target population reporting adequate WASH services and hygiene practices, exceeding the 85% target. Safe hand washing at critical times rose from 85% to 91%. Despite these gains, 61.8% of surveyed households reported increased waiting times at water points and inconsistent access to chlorine limited water-quality. Monitoring, pointing to unresolved capacity constraints in camps that were designed as temporary but have become permanent settlements. The shift from diesel to solar pumping, the transition from PVC to high-density polyethylene (HDPE) piping, and the capacitation of community water-management committees and hand pump mechanics are identified as key drivers of technical and institutional sustainability. The paper argues that WASH programming in protracted, low-return-prospect displacement contexts must move from an emergency logic toward durable infrastructure and tariff-based operations and maintenance systems, and it draws out transferable lessons for similar interventions in fragile and conflict-affected areas. The novelty of this study lies in re-analysing routine post-intervention WASH monitoring data as an independent field study, disaggregating to the site level to expose inequities that are invisible in aggregate, donor-facing indicators, and situating the Darfur experience within a comparative body of recent WASH evidence from analogous displacement settings in South and Central Darfur and elsewhere in the region.

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