Sudan needs $1.8 billion in aid for 2007 – UN
Dec 14, 2006 (GENEVA) — Sudan needs $1.8 billion for humanitarian and development programs in 2007, much of it to support hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur who depend on food supplies for survival, the U.N. said Thursday.
The global body asked for more than $650 million specifically for humanitarian operations in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and some 2.5 million driven from their homes in three years of fighting between the Sudanese government and ethnic African rebels.
More money is needed to support “recovery and development activities” in the region the U.N. has described as the site of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Other funds are needed for aid and reconstruction programs in southern Sudan, where a 2005 peace deal ended over two decades of civil war. That conflict, which was separate from the one in Darfur, was the African continent’s longest running at the time.
Manuel Aranda da Silva – deputy to Jan Pronk, the chief U.N. envoy who was thrown out of Sudan in October – said he expected 600,000 refugees and uprooted Sudanese to go back home next year, adding to the 1 million who already have returned to their villages and towns in the south of the country since the peace deal.
Last month, U.N. Secretary-general Kofi Annan appealed for nearly $4 billion to help 27 million people in over two dozen countries “whose lives have been crippled by conflict and calamity.”
He expressed dismay that rich nations have consistently given just two-thirds of the funds needed.
The global body asked for about $2 billion in humanitarian and recovery assistance for Sudan in 2006, but only received about $1.36 billion, or 68% of its appeal.
(AP)