Relief groups alarmed over growing exodus in violence-hit west Sudan
CAIRO, Nov 14 (AFP) — International relief agencies are sounding the alarm about a looming food crisis in western Sudan as they report a growing number of people fleeing militias burning their villages and farmland.
The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Sudan warned Monday that the problem there “may emerge as the worst humanitarian crisis in the Sudan since 1998” when tens of thousands of people died in a region just to the south.
The UN coordinator’s office has in the past month raised its estimate from 400,0000 to 500,000 for the number of people displaced within the Darfur region, in addition to 70,000 who have actually crossed the border into Chad.
“That’s a major population movement (to Chad). It’s a pretty good sign that things are becoming intolerable,” said Ben Parker, a spokesman for the humanitarian coordinator, Mukesh Kapila.
Since February, the region has been wracked by clashes between a rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), and government forces backed by Arab militias.
The SLM is demanding a better economic deal from Khartoum.
Despite reports of violations, a shaky government-rebel ceasefire brokered by Chad is holding.
However, there are no signs the Arab militias have stopped burning villages and farmland.
Conflicts have long simmered between ethnic Arab nomadic tribesmen and African farmers, but they appear to have spun out of control since the government used them in the war against the rebels, relief workers say.
Accurate figures and a clear assessment of the problem are hard to obtain as UN officials complain Khartoum is slow to grant them travel permits to a region that is already remote and dangerous to travel in.
Another problem is attracting donor contributions, Parker added.
So far Britain, Norway and the Netherlands have pledged 3.4 million dollars in response to a UN appeal for 23 million dollars made in late September, Parker said.
The difficulty for aid agencies to obtain access and oversight in turn “discourages donors from pledging money,” Parker told AFP by satellite telephone during an unrelated mission to southern Sudan.
The agencies on the ground — Medair, Save the Children, the International Committee of the Red Cross, UN Children’s Fund and the World Food Program — are appealing for non-government organizations (NGOs) to join the fray.
“We’ve been shouting to other NGOs (to help in West Darfur State) because we’re quite stretched,” Swiss-based Medair’s Sheryl Haw said when contacted in Lausanne.
Medair helps some 60,000 people in the area of El-Geneina, the main town in West Darfur State which lies near the border with Chad.
“That number (of displaced) keeps going up. It has doubled from July until now,” Haw said.
Parker said there are already reports of people suffering from severe malnutrition in camps, including children, as well as deaths from diarrhoea and malaria.
He said a severe food shortage could be noticeable within months, though he hesitated to use the word famine.
“Rapid nutrition assessments conducted in different communities showed global malnutrition levels raised by up to 30 percent,” Medair said in a statement.
“What food they had was destroyed” when militias burned their villages, Haw said.
Medair said it has been distributing shelter material and household items, while the World Food Program is distributing general food rations to the most vulnerable people.
The existing health centers already supplied by Medair were given additional drugs, the group said in a statement.
Poor villagers are scattered in small makeshift camps in the harsh, semi-arid plains and highlands of Sudan’s West, South and North Darfur states as well as across the border in Chad, relief officials say.
The camps amount to sticks, bits of plastic as well as temporary grass huts, with the largest containing probably no more than 50,000 people. Some people camp out in the gardens of relatives.
One relief official said the Darfur region suffers from the same factors that produced the famine in the Bahr al-Ghazal region in 1998: limited access for relief groups, marauding militiamen, and entrenched poverty.
“The parallels are evocative,” the official said on condition of anonymity.