Some parts of southern Sudan said experiencing famine

KHARTOUM, June 8, 2005 (Sudan Tribune) — Radhia Achouri, spokeswoman for the U.N. advance mission in Sudan, has said there is famine in some regions in southern Sudan.

A Sudanese woman sits with her malnourished child at a feeding centre run by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres in the village of Paliang, roughly 160 km northwest of the southern town of Rumbek, May 25, 2005. (Reuters).

At a media conference today, Wednesday, she said the UN would work hard to meet the requirements of the regions suffering from food shortage in the coming period.

Donors promised $4.5 billion to bolster the peace deal at a conference in Oslo in April, but warehouses at the Kenyan border town of Lokichoggio used as a staging post for aid dropped by U.N. cargo planes are almost empty.

Relief agencies worry that calls for help in the south may be drowned out by appeals for the Darfur conflict, which erupted in 2003 when rebels began fighting the government over similar concerns about marginalisation voiced by the southern rebels.

Aid workers fear growing hunger will enflame localised conflicts over water and cattle that could complicate the most delicate stage of attempts by former rebels to implement their January peace deal with the Khartoum government.

Radhia Achouri also praised the deployment of peacekeepers to southern Sudan and other regions which were included in the recent peace agreement signed between the Sudanese government and Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army last January in Nairobi.

She went on to say, however, that the delay in the deployment of peacekeepers was because the necessary logistics, which the troops needed, were not in place.

She pointed out that 474 peacekeepers had arrived in the country and were based in different parts of Sudan.

Responding to questions regarding the German peacekeepers, she said that that the delay of these troops was due to entry visa procedures and affirmed that this could be overcome if an agreement was reached between the Sudanese government and the German government.

She further added that Sudan had the right to ask for official arrangements before the German troops entered the country.