Rains worsen Darfur’s critical situation
By David White
NYALA, Sudan, June 07, 2004 (Financial Times) — The first rains came on Sunday to Nyala, the main city of Sudan’s South Darfur state, announcing a full-scale food emergency that senior aid workers said would now last at least until late next year.
The start of the rainy season, which usually lasts up to four months, has several consequences. Firstly it means that the dirt tracks that serve as roads throughout the region become rapidly impassable, making it difficult or impossible to get aid supplies by land to people in displaced persons’ camps in remote areas.
Secondly, aid officials say it is now too late for uprooted people to cultivate their land if they returned to their villages. This means that food shortages would last until the next crop was due. Therefore even if people returned to their destroyed villages, they would remain dependent for the next 18 months on aid organisations for food, shelter and water.
Thirdly it also brings fears of mosquitos and malaria, adding to severe health problems in the camps including measles and other diseases.
At the Kalma camp, 14 km outside Nyala, deaths have been running at between 8-14 a day, mainly children. For a population of 28,000, five cemeteries have sprung up around the camp in the last three months.
In the whole of the Darfur region, a territory bigger than Iraq, more than 1m are believed to have been displaced since armed rebellions early last year brought a devastating response from government forces and allied Arab militias against civilians.
Hilary Benn, UK secretary for international development, said the United Nations system, with few exceptions, had been much too slow in facing up to the Darfur crisis.
Mr Benn, who was expected to announce an increased contribution to the aid effort, was trying to persuade Sudanese authorities to do more to enforce peace and provide protection to villagers affected by the fighting.
After a tense meeting with local government officials in south Darfur, he said he found them “astonishingly complacent” about the crisis. He added that there was an urgent need for shelter, water and sanitation as well as food.