“Catastrophe” of Sudanese child refugees, says Austrian UNICEF

VIENNA, June 15, 2004 (dpa) — More than one million people, mostly women and children, are in flight from armed militias in Sudan, the Austrian section of the U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF said Tuesday.

In a statement marking June 16 “Day of the African Child”, it said Janjaweed militias were attacking villages, murdering, looting and raping.

The situation of the child refugees was catastrophic, said the statement. Every fifth child in the Darfur region was acutely undernourished. Many had dysentery, measles and high fever. Children in refugee camps were dying every day from starvation and exhaustion.

In the past few weeks UNICEF had distributed 130 tons of high- protein milk to children in Darfur hospitals and camps. It had set up 81 health stations with the most important medicines for 500,000 people. A measles vaccination campaign had been launched for more than two million children.

UNICEF had also distributed tens of thousands of blankets and plastic sheets to refugee families. Clean drinking water had been supplied to 340,000 people.

The “Day of the African Child” is an initiative of the Organization of African Unity. It is in memory of schoolchildren killed in a Soweto uprising against the South African apartheid regime on June 16, 1976.