Sudan needs US$1.5 billion for humanitarian aid next year – UN

Dec 2, 2005 (GENEVA) — Sudan needs US$1.5 billion (A1.3 billion) for humanitarian aid in 2006, despite a peace deal between the north and the south signed almost a year ago, the United Nations said Friday.

An internally displaced Sudanese woman drags a sack of food distributed by the UN World Food Program, at the Abu Shouk refugee camp, on the outskirts of El-Fasher.

The money will mainly be spent on food aid, helping those displaced by the civil war return home, demining roads, demobilizing former combatants and hiring additional security forces, said Jan Pronk, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special representative to Sudan.

The funds will be targeted at both south Sudan and the ongoing conflict in the country’s Darfur region.

With that money, “the international community … can do a good job of creating the conditions within which the Sudanese can finally solve their own problems,” Pronk told reporters.

The government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army signed a peace agreement in January, formally ending Africa’s longest running civil war and creating an autonomous south. Fighting still continues in Darfur, the country’s volatile western region, despite more than a year of African Union-brokered negotiations.

“Sudan has made great strides towards peace. Those positive steps need to be supported with generous and timely funding,” Pronk added.

On Wednesday, the United Nations appealed for a record US$4.7 billion (A4 billion) to ease major humanitarian crises around the world in 2006. About one third of that money is slated for Sudan, making it by far the largest single country recipient of U.N. aid.

Although security conditions are improving in the south and fewer people are dying in conflict, people are getting poorer by the day and there are more cases of severe malnutrition, Pronk said.

About US$600 million (A510 million) of the figure will be spent on food aid alone, Pronk said.

The United Nations is also asking international donors for a further US$212 million (A180 million) for reconstruction efforts.

(AP/ST)