Food aid arrives in Sudan amid peace talks

By KATHERINE ARMS

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 22, 2004 (UPI) — For the first time U.S. food aid is being sent through Libya along a humanitarian corridor across the Sahara desert to nearly 200,000 Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad who fled the fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region.
More than 6,500 metric tons of food for the refugees arrived at the Libyan port of Benghazi earlier this month after a three-week journey by ship from New Orleans, according the United Nations World Food Program. The first convoy of more than 350 trucks has started the tough 1,750-mile trip from Benghazi across Libya’s rocky terrain.

A girl watches as her mother grinds cereal with a pestle at Abushouk camp near El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, November 21, 2004. (Reuters).

“The human tragedy unfolding in Darfur and eastern Chad over the past several months has compelled us to respond,” said Tony Hall, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, who arrived in Libya after visiting Darfur. “This donation will go a substantial way to relieving the suffering of the thousands of people who have been forced not only out of their homes, but out of their country by the fighting in Darfur.

“This cooperation between the governments of the United States and Libya for humanitarian ends is a further indication of the improving relations between our two nations,” Hall said at a news conference on Monday in the Libyan city of Al Kufra at the edge of the Sahara.

The corridor through Libya is vital for the delivery of the food aid to refugees. Chad has a limited infrastructure and is remote – the humanitarian corridor allows food to be delivered safely and in a more cost-effective fashion. This shipment is enough for the refugees in Chad for a two-month period, said the agency.

Conditions for local residents have also worsened due to a poor harvest this year, exacerbated in some areas by locust swarms. The agency said relations between the refugees have been good on the whole, but there have been incidents regarding commodities such as water and firewood that have resulted in deaths.

The World Food Program has received just over $50 million of the $71 million it needs for its operations in east Chad until February 2005, leaving a shortfall of just under 30 percent.

Food aid for the refugees comes after a successful U.N. Security Council meeting in Kenya last week where Sudanese government officials and rebel leaders from the south of the country signed an agreement to stop 21 years of war by the end of December.

As the council’s ambassadors looked on, a Sudanese government official and a representative from the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement signed a document promising to sign a treaty by Dec. 31.

After the document was signed, the Security Council unanimously voted on a resolution promising economic and political aid for Africa’s largest country once peace is reached.

But aid agencies were quick to criticize the pact, saying any agreement could not exclude Darfur while innocent people were displaced and attacked in conflict between the government-backed militia and rebels.

Oxfam, the international aid organization, said: “Instead of responding to the ongoing (Darfur) crisis with concrete action, the Security Council could only agree to ‘monitor compliance’ with previous resolutions.

“For the people of Darfur, ‘monitoring compliance’ has become U.N.-speak for more death and suffering,” the statement said.

The civil war in oil-rich south Sudan has killed about 2 million people, mostly from disease and famine. The war started in 1983, when Khartoum attempted to impose Islamic law on the animist and Christian south.

The American ambassador to the United Nations, John C. Danforth, organized the Nairobi session. Danforth is the current president of the council and said that convening so close to Sudan would pressure parties to end the north-south war and also to help stop the conflict in Darfur.

Friday’s accord was no surprise. Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha and Sudan’s People’s Liberation Movement head John Garang both promised in speeches made to the U.N. council on Thursday that they would work to finalize a peace accord as soon as possible.

Garang made it clear that he did not see any problems in formulating a treaty by the end of the year, but he said it was Khartoum’s responsibility to pay for his forces before and during their integration into the national army.

Taha did not mention the December deadline in his speech but did stress that his country is badly in need of funding for development. He said Sudan needed $1.8 billion for this purpose.

Troubles in Sudan’s western Darfur region were touched on, and the council said it would monitor abuses there and take action on any party not meeting commitments. Observers said conflict in Darfur could not be sorted out until there is a diplomatic resolve to ending the strife in the south.

While the world’s attention lately has been on Darfur, the south is facing growing food shortages, according to the U.N. World Food Program.

It said 1.4 million people in south Sudan are in need of assistance, and the food outlook in 2005 looks bleak. The WFP said there could be a 20 – 50 percent decline in food production due late and insufficient rains, inter-clan fighting and militia battles.

WFP said most families in the southern areas of Sudan would run out of food from the last crop much before the October 2005 harvest. It said 15 percent of the populous in southern Sudan suffers from chronic food shortages.

The aid agency added that if a peaceful solution for the Darfur conflict were found, villagers returning to their communities there would cause an added strain on the country’s already stretched food supplies.

But tougher talk on Darfur was seemingly avoided, as members appeared to focus more on the south Sudan conflict.

“I regret to report that the security situation in Darfur continues to deteriorate,” Secretary- General Kofi Annan told the council on Thursday, mentioning specifically “the government and its militias as well as the rebel groups.”

“When crimes on such a scale are being committed and a sovereign state appears unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens, a grave responsibility falls on the international community, specifically this council,” Annan said.

Attacks on women of all ages in Darfur have alarmed the world. The United Nations Children’s Fund says these assaults have no age limits. Very young girls to elderly women are attacked, and up to now there have been no reports of any perpetrators being apprehended or penalized.

Women and children leave displaced persons camps in Darfur to collect firewood and fetch water. Though they know they are at risk when they leave the camps, they have no choice, as they need such staples to survive. Their treks are long, sometimes six to eight hours, as they search for branches and water in the desert.

The World Health Organization said the conflict, which has been ongoing since 2003, has killed about 70,000 people from hunger and disease, and more than 1.5 million have been left homeless. Aid groups say continued fighting threatens to halt the delivery of badly needed food and aid supplies.

But the agreement in Nairobi deals specifically with southern Sudan. The signed pact said, “The parties declare their commitment to expeditiously complete negotiations… so as to conclude and sign the comprehensive peace agreement no later than 31 December, 2004.

“The parties recommend themselves to finalize and conclude a comprehensive peace agreement in recognition that prompt completion of the peace process is essential for all the people of the Sudan, as it will help in resolving all challenges facing the country.”

The resolution requests a development plan from bodies such as the United Nations and the World Bank. Included is possible debt-relief for Sudan, which does have oil but is still poor and lacking in infrastructure.

“There is no time to waste,” the secretary general told the conference last Thursday. “The speedy conclusion of the north-south talks would not only help to curb the further spread of the conflict to other parts of the country, but it would also serve as a basis and catalyst for the resolution of existing conflicts.”

Meanwhile, 11 African countries have signed a vague peace agreement for the troubled Great Lakes region promising to end genocide, war and hunger that has killed more than 3 million people in the last 10 years.

Conflict in the Great Lakes region easily spills over one country’s border to another. The pact is a reminder to all that trouble quickly spreads and all countries have a responsibility in solving issues.

The two-day summit in Tanzania ended with heads of state signing an outline for peace. The United Nations-backed deal calls for regional leaders to disarm rebel groups, halt the arms flow and cooperate on solving refugee issues.

Annan went there straight from Nairobi, where the United Nations successfully secured a peace pact between the warring north and south of Sudan. Observers said this promise between Great Lakes countries was a positive move but more is needed.

In particular, there are few details on how such a peace should be handled. Another meeting is scheduled for November 2005, and observers say this is too far off for any promises to be made good.

“No one has got everything they wanted from this process, but everyone has got what they need — a real chance for peace, stability, democracy and development in a vast region,” Annan said at the ceremony in Dar Es Salaam.