Children seek food from UN’s Annan in south Sudan

By Beatrice Mategwa

RUMBEK, Sudan, May 29 (Reuters) – U.N. chief Kofi Annan said on Sunday he would press donors to meet aid pledges for southern Sudan after he was confronted by a stark message on the urgent need for food on his first visit to the war-battered region.

John Garang (L), chairman of Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, welcomes U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan (R) in Rumbek, Sudan, May 29, 2005. (Reuters).

“Kofi, no food, hunger imminent,” read a banner held up by a small group of children on the roadside as his convoy passed along the dirt streets of Rumbek, the southern bastion of former rebel leader John Garang. The government and Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed a deal in January to end a 21-year-old conflict that has left the vast expanses of southern Sudan with virtually no infrastructure and a precarious existence for many.

Donors promised $4.5 billion to bolster the peace deal at a conference in Oslo in April, but aid workers say donors are failing to send food needed to avert the south’s worst hunger crisis since a 1998 famine in which at least 60,000 people died.

“The Oslo donors conference made a lot of promises … We were happy with the pledges but they are not helping us now as our people would deserve,” Garang said after talks with the U.N. secretary-general in a simple house with a corrugated iron roof.

“There are people actually who have starved to death and the U.N. food pipeline is virtually empty. So we are asking the secretary-general to please do something about it,” he said as rain poured down on the town.

Annan responded, saying: “The U.N. team is here and we will redouble our efforts and we will press the international community to make good on their pledges. Cash today is better than cash tomorrow and we can help save lots of lives.”

Annan was greeted at Rumbek’s airstrip by hundreds of people. Some sang, while others climbed trees to see him. He was offered a traditional gift of white bulls to symbolise peace, which he said he would hand on to the needy.

HIGH MALNUTRITION

The southern conflict that erupted in 1983 claimed 2 million lives and spread across the south of the country, which has substantial oil reserves. But relief agencies worry that calls for help in the south may be drowned out by appeals for another conflict in Sudan’s west.

Annan visited the western Darfur region on Saturday where a more than two-year-old conflict has left tens of thousands dead and 2 million homeless. He faced similar calls for help there.

“We are simply unable to meet the needs of the south Sudanese. Malnutrition rates are high,” said Rene McGuffin, spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Programme.

“The peace has brought great expectations and at the moment those expectations are difficult to meet,” she said, adding that a poor harvest last year and the return of southerners to their homes was putting extra pressure on limited resources.

Aid workers say growing hunger in the south will enflame localised conflicts over water and cattle and could complicate attempts by former rebels to implement the southern peace deal.

Under that deal, power and wealth will be split between the mainly Muslim north of the country and the largely Christian and animist south. But the south can also vote for secession after an interim period of six years, putting pressure on the Sudanese authorities to ensure southerners feel the benefits of peace.

Alongside humanitarian issues, a U.N. official said Annan would also discuss the deployment of a southern peacekeeping force during the three-day visit to Sudan.

Some 10,000 peacekeeping troops, military observers and hundreds of civilian police have started deploying in Sudan, Africa’s largest country, to help shore up peace in the south.