Sudan urges humanitarian aid for eastern Sudan refugees
December 24, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan has urged the United Nations to back its efforts in sheltering Eritrean and Somali refugees who continue to arrive in the country adding that at least 18000 arrived since the beginning of 2008.
UNHCR estimates the number of refugees in eastern Sudan to be around 133,000. They originate mostly from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Close to 100,000 live in 12 camps where they receive international assistance while an estimated 40,000 live in rural and urban concentrations.
The humanitarian aid provided by the international community is “modest compared to the number of refugees,” said the Commissioner for Refugees in Sudan, Mohammed Ahmed al-Aghbash, in a stament to the Egyptian MENA.
The Sudanese official said the number of Somali refugees has reached some 5,000.
Wars in the Horn of Africa, famines and worsening human rights situations have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia to eastern Sudan since 1968.
They all live in small straw huts in vast areas surrounded by barren lands and bare hills in the province of Kasala, whose leaders say the influx of refugees has depleted the resources of their towns and villages.
Aid workers say donors have been less enthusiastic about funding the decades-old humanitarian operation in eastern Sudan, opting to focus more on areas like Darfur, where a four-year-old conflict has displaced some 2.5 million people and where media coverage is more high profile.
(ST)