UNHCR: Aid funding shrinking as Darfur violence escalates

Dec 1, 2005 (LONDON) — Lack of money is forcing the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to cut back aid for displaced Sudanese in Chad and Darfur even as violence escalates, the head of the UNHCR’s regional operation said Thursday.

Violence from conflicts among rebel groups, the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militia in Darfur, Sudan, which seemed to be calming a few months ago, is becoming more sophisticated, said Craig Sanders, UNHCR’s head of desk for Chad and Darfur.

Sanders compared what he saw on his visit to Sudan and Chad in July to what is happening now.

“A few months ago it was a relatively positive situation, but since then we’ve seen an increase in violence,” he said.

In the Darfur region of western Sudan, rebel groups are burning empty and half-abandoned villages, bringing camel and cattle herds into reclaimed villages to destroy crops before they can be harvested, and targeting the 7,700 peacekeepers in the area, Sanders said.

In the UNHCR’s 12 refugee camps in neighboring Chad, where 212,000 Sudanese have fled to escape fighting that began in Darfur in early 2003, hospitality is wearing thin as the refugees compete with local communities for water and firewood in the remote desert near the country’s eastern border.

“We are very, very concerned,” Sanders said.

Providing aid to refugees in Sudan and Chad is one of the most expensive humanitarian operations currently under way, and funding is getting scarcer, he said.

“We are having to tighten the belt. We are having to freeze certain activities,” Sanders said. The UNHCR, which gets the majority of its funding from government, corporate and individual contributions, is $20 million shy of its $81 million budget for Sudan this year. In Chad, it needs another $13 million to fulfill its $31 million budget.

Administrative spending has been capped at UNHCR, as has the procurement of items for refugees such as blankets. Services at refugee camps will be the next thing to be cut, Sanders said.

“If this continues, if we see a withdrawal of the humanitarian workers in this, it risks declining into chaos,” Sanders said.

“This is precisely the time for us to be in there,” he added.

Sanders said he would be going to Sudan within 48 hours to assess the situation for himself, but admitted humanitarian efforts can only do so much in a country wracked by political turmoil.

“A humanitarian solution is not going to solve the problems in Darfur or Chad,” he said.

(AP/ST)