‘Mass starvation’ looms in Sudan’s Darfur region: MSF

NAIROBI, May 20 (AFP) — The entire population of Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, some six million people, “is teetering on the verge of mass starvation,” the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned Thursday.

A nutritional survey carried out by MSF in the western region revealed that “threat of famine is looming” and that there were “dangerously high levels of malnutrition and mortality with a rapidly deteriorating food security situation” there.

The three states that make up the Darfur region are home to an estimated six million people.

The Khartoum government and allied militia have been widely accused of conducting a policy of “ethnic cleansing” in Darfur and of targetting civilians in response to a rebellion that began in February 2003 and of hampering essential humanitarian access.

“The whole population is teetering on the verge of mass starvation,” MSF said in a statement.

At least a million people have been displaced in Darfur, according to UN figures, with about 120,000 having fled across the border with neighbouring Chad, where aid agencies, including UN organisations, have proved unable to fully meet humanitarian needs.

Darfur itself has already produced “high levels of excess death and malnutrition,” MSF said.

“A nutritional study conducted in Wadi Saleh and Mukjar Provinces revealed that 21.5 percent of children under five in the area were already suffering from acute malnutrition,” the statement said.

“Worse still, the study found that approximately five percent of the children under five in the families surveyed had died in the last three months,” it added.

“These levels of mortality are well in excess of emergency definitions. Most of the children died from simple causes such as hunger, diarrhoea and malaria,” it said, warning that unless huge quantities of food aid was delivered, the situation was bound to worsen.

“Water systems, crops and livestock were looted or destroyed during attacks on villages. The people have not been able to plant yet and no harvest is expected this year,” the statement said.

“As the entire population is further weakened by hunger, they will only become more vulnerable to disease.

“The threats of malaria and diarrhoeal diseases will only further increase with the onset of rains. The death and suffering is set to escalate to catastrophic proportions,” it said.

MSF went on to complain that “bureaucratic barriers” imposed by Khartoum had prevented essential aid getting into Darfur.

“In addition, the government has not taken action to stop violence against civilians.

“The aid community and the United Nations has so far failed to be present and provide adequate levels of desperately needed food, water and shelter,” it chided.

“The current humanitarian aid effort is woefully insufficient, serving irregularly only a fraction of victims of this crisis. The arrival of the rains in late May will hamper or paralyze aid distribution in many areas of Darfur.

“The government of Sudan and the aid community must collaborate to launch a massive relief operation now!” the statement demanded.