UNICEF fears for half million children in Dafur ahead of visit
CAIRO, June 12 (AFP) — The UN children’s fund UNICEF has warned that half a million children are in danger in Darfur, as its director Carol Bellamy prepared to visit the war-ravaged region of western Sudan on Sunday and Monday.
Bellamy was due to arrive in Khartoum late Saturday and travel to Nyala in southern Darfur the next day, according to a UNICEF spokesperson in the Sudanese capital.
On Monday, the UNICEF head was to visit Geneina in western Darfur and return to Khartoum for talks with government officials.
Bellamy will “see first-hand the life-threatening situation facing hundreds of thousands of children caught in one of the world’s most rapidly developing humanitarian crises”, UNICEF said on the eve of her visit.
The agency was “deeply concerned about the growing vulnerability of the vast displaced population in Darfur, now estimated at some one million people, half of them children.”
Nearly all now face food shortages, outbreaks of disease, exploitation, and the rainy season, which has just started.
Bellamy’s visit comes after UNICEF revised upwards an initial appeal for some 33 million dollars in relief funds for its activities in Darfur. The new figure now stands at 46 millions dollars.
The agency is currently focusing on providing access to safe drinking water, primary health care, shelter material, education and hygiene kits for families.
A major campaign to immunize more than two million children between the ages of nine months and 15 years against measles is underway in the region.
The Sudanese health ministry, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization are all involved in the massive campaign. The agencies are also distributing vitamins to overcome the effects of widespread malnutrition.
A recent UNICEF report described the situation of displaced children and women in Darfur as “grim”, saying that child malnutrition in the region had reached as high as 23 percent.
This was well above the internationally recognized “critical level” of 15 percent, the agency noted.
It also expressed alarm at the “low level of sanitation, the growing number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) requiring shelter and signs of increasing malnutrition amongst children and women”.
But UNICEF expects “IDPs to remain outside their villages of origin due to not unfounded fears for their security and to the rains which will make movement impossible”.
The agency further warned that “the lack of adequate shelter and overcrowded conditions will make the IDPs even more vulnerable to disease than they already are”, leaving them even more dependent on outside help.
Insecurity continues to be a major constraint for humanitarian agencies, as not all areas are accessible, said the UNICEF report, which also cited security reasons for delays in the delivery of supplies.
The report added that the lack of security also left the IDPs vulnerable to frequent harassment and attack.
UNICEF plans to provide primary health care services for one million children and women, treat 1,200 children for severe malnutrition, provide safe water for some 600,000 people and ensure that 160,000 other get adequate sanitation.
It also hopes to provide 42,000 children with learning materials and rehabilitate 72 schools, and reunite children separated from their families and train some 15,000 community educators in the dangers posed by mines.
Darfur is in the throes of what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, prompted by a rebel conflict sparked in February last year that led to a fierce retaliation by government forces and allied Janjaweed militia.
The EU, the United States and the United Nations have all called on Khartoum to rein in the Janjaweed. Sudan for its part has dismissed charges by the international community that ethnic cleansing is going on in the region.
The conflict has forced more than 120,000 people across the border into Chad, according to UNICEF.