Intro:

Population growth around the major cities in Sudan’s Darfur region has put added stress on what was already a scarce resource there: water.

That’s the assessment of the man at the UN-African Union mission in the province, UNAMID, who is helping communities to find solutions to the problem.

Olatunji Ayeni, chief of the mission’s Water and Environmental Protection Unit, explained that access to safe drinking water has been one of the non-political drivers of conflict in Darfur, where fighting that began more than a decade ago has left two million people displaced.

It is also an issue that particularly affects women and girls who spend hours walking long distances every day just to fetch water for household use.

Mr Ayeni spoke to Setyo Budi about UNAMID’s work with local authorities to harvest and recycle wastewater, as well as the mission’s own steps to monitor groundwater levels in a region devoid of rivers and lakes.