Oxfam to expand its humanitarian access to Sudan’s Darfur region
NAIROBI, May 23 (AFP) — Britain’s international aid agency Oxfam warned on Sunday of a worsening humanitarian crisis in western Sudan’s Darfur region, and pledged to expand its operations there.
“The scale of the crisis and the ability of the international community and Sudan’s government to respond to the needs of two million people affected by the conflict remains a daunting task, despite Khartoum’s recent positive moves to grant visas and facilitate travel permits for aid agencies to work there,” Oxfam said in a statement.
“As a result, Oxfam was now able to expand its humanitarian relief activities in Darfur, as visas have finally been issued for an additional 15 expert humanitarian staff,” it said.
“I hope this new move will mean that our water engineers can finally get to the Darfur region and to remote communities where people need urgent help,” it quoted Oxfam regional director Caroline Nursey as saying.
But Nursey urged that access to Darfur must be sustained over the next three months and beyond, “if we are to significantly improve the health of thousands of displaced people and prevent outbreaks of disease.”
She warned that “as local supplies and resources run out, thousands of families are becoming increasingly reliant on assistance from aid agencies such as Oxfam.”
She said that Darfur experiences a cyclical “hunger gap” from April until harvest-time in October every year, but with the conflict this year, even more people will be seriously affected by food shortages and lack of water.
Oxfam’s emergency operation teams, based in the administrative capital, El Fasher, in North Darfur, currently cares for 33,000 displaced people at Abu Shouk Camp outside the town with meagre facilities.
“This crisis is bigger than any one agency can cope with and the international community and Sudanese government need to work together to end the civilian suffering,” Nursey urged.
The conflict in Darfour, near Chad, has left as many as 10,000 people dead and displaced one million people inside Sundan in addition to sending 100,000 refugees in to Chad since it erupted in February 2003, according to UN estimates.