UN appeals for urgent aid to hundreds of thousands of west Sudanese
KHARTOUM, Oct 8 (AFP) — The United Nations has appealed for urgent donations to provide water, food, shelter and other relief for half a million people fleeing violence in western Sudan, said a UN statement obtained Wednesday.
The office of the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said immediate funding is needed for shelter, food, water, sanitation, health care, education and agricultural aid to about 500,000 people in the Darfur region.
Though OCHA did not disclose the sum needed, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) last week appealed for 16.6 million dollars for 70,000 Sudanese refugees “living in a desperate situation on the Chad-Sudan border for months.”
OCHA said the United Nations on September 15 announced a 22. 8-million-dollar plan called the Greater Darfur Special Initiative aimed at accelerating relief for the most vulnerable people in Darfur.
“The number of people in the Darfur region displaced because of the recent conflict is estimated at 300,000,” the OCHA statement said, adding that an extra 200,000 people had been displaced internally in the course of the past 15 years.
“Militias continue to destroy livelihoods and cause displacement into Nyala town in southern Darfur, global nutrition rates have reportedly increased and humanitarian partners on the ground do not have the human and financial resources to cope with the evolving situation,” OCHA said in its statement.
An armed conflict erupted in February in western Sudan’s Darfur states, where the Sudan Liberation Movement says it is fighting for an end to marginalisation and neglect of the large, impoverished region by central authorities.
An official in western Sudan has said the fighting had cost 3,000 lives.
It has also left 400,000 displaced, according to previous UN estimates.
The government and the SLM struck a six-week ceasefire in early September, but the SLM accuses the government or its allied militias of having violated it several times.
Humanitarian Affairs Minister Ibrahim Mahmud Hamid said earlier this week that the food situation in the Darfur region was satisfactory after the delivery of 980 tonnes from the US government, 15,000 tonnes from the European Union and 2,000 tonnes from the Khartoum government.