US sees food gap in Darfur despite emergency aid
May 18, 2006 (WASHINGTON) — Emergency food shipments bound for Sudan’s Darfur region will help meet at most 75 percent of the needs of displaced people suffering shortages amid ongoing violence, a U.S. foreign aid official said on Thursday.
Lloyd Pierson, an assistant administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said “immediate gaps in food assistance will remain” in Darfur despite hasty U.S. shipments of 47,600 metric tons of food.
“With the emergency shipments, the additional ones … that will fill about 70-to-75 percent of the food and non-food requirements in Darfur,” helping about 2.8 million people, Pierson told a House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee.
Lawmakers were seeking an update on the situation in Darfur since the Sudan government signed a peace deal earlier this month with one rebel faction. Two other factions have refused to sign the deal, leaving the outcome uncertain.
Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer called the agreement “an historic opportunity to build a peaceful, democratic and secure future for the people of Darfur,” although she acknowledged hurdles remained to implement it.
But Rep. Diane Watson, a California Democrat, said she feared it was “an agreement built on sand — the product not of weary combatants desperate for peace, but of weary Western diplomats, desperate for a piece of paper.”
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million forced to flee their homes in Darfur since rebels took up arms in the western Sudanese region in 2003. The United States has labeled as genocide the revenge killing, looting and rape by government-backed Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed.
Because contributions from world donors have lagged behind Darfur’s food needs, the U.N. World Food Program earlier this month was forced to cut food rations to the region in half.
An emergency spending bill working its way through the U.S. Congress includes up to $225 million in food aid for Sudan, with $150 million for Darfur, Pierson said. With that, he said the United States would meet half of the WFP’s total 2006 appeal for Sudan.
Pierson noted that the Sudanese government for the first time said it would send food aid to Darfur — about 20,000 metric tons — but he voiced some doubt that it would be fulfilled.
He said the shipments of U.S. food should start arriving in Sudan in about two weeks. It will then take another two to four weeks to reach needy people.
Pierson complained relief efforts in Darfur continued to be hampered “by ongoing violence and government obstruction,” and cited “military operations, factional fighting, ethnic conflicts, banditry, lawlessness, and Janjaweed actions.”
(Reuters)