Darfur IDPs face food shortage

AL-JUNAYNAH, July 12, 2004 (IRIN) — Since the rains started two weeks ago in
Western Darfur, Sudan, displaced people in the region’s capital,
Al-Junaynah, have been facing a shortage of relief food. While rations
have been distributed to some of the internally displaced persons (IDPs),
others have not received any.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has been registering IDPs and trying to
provide them with food. However, it says its efforts have been affected by
a shortage of staff and resources. The agency has been trying to improve
its capacity to respond to IDPs’ needs, while appealing for funds to do
so.

In the meantime, thousands of IDPs squatting in Al-Junaynah and in the
four camps around the town have had to fend for themselves.

“I have been displaced for seven months and never been assisted,” said
Ali, who lives in Al-Riyad camp. “Our women go and wash clothes or do
domestic work and get paid, so we can eat,” he said.

“I came here six months ago and I haven’t received food yet, because I’m
not registered,” said Fatumah, an old woman in Krinding camp. When she
can, Fatumah does manual labour to feed herself and her family, carrying
bricks or sand for local construction workers, grinding grain, washing
clothes in the town or collecting firewood and selling it.

Maryam, another woman, said her family had been displaced for three
months. She had never received food, so she worked as a casual labourer in
town from early morning until evening. Her husband also found work, but
often there was nothing available: about twice a week they and their six
children had nothing to eat.

“Practically none of us gets any food here,” a sheikh in Krinding told
IRIN. Some managed to eke out a living doing odd jobs like digging
latrines in the town or domestic labour, he said.

But there are not enough odd jobs for 90,000 or so IDPs in and around
Al-Junaynah town, most of whom were destitute, aid workers said. “The vast
majority are dependent – they need the food,” one aid worker said.

In recent days, a number of demonstrations or low-level riots have been
held at food-distribution or registration sites and outside agencies’
offices, in what one aid worker described as “a rent-a-mob”. Aid workers
have reportedly been threatened on several occasions with violence, which
was then defused. Aid workers entering camps have sometimes found
themselves surrounded by hundreds of people demanding to be registered and
fed.

On Wednesday, about 130 women and 15 men – at least some of whom were not
IDPs – gathered outside one of the UN offices with a simple message: “This
is the fourth time we have watched as other people received food and we
got nothing. If you have nothing for us, let us go to Chad.” [Chad has
been hosting tens of thousands of refugees from Darfur.]

“It’s a sense of frustration at the perceived lack of food or the
inequality in the distribution of the food,” commented one aid worker.

TENS OF THOUSANDS NOT REGISTERED TO RECEIVE FOOD

Telling the difference between Al-Junaynah’s IDPs and the town’s 100,000
residents is often impossible. Townspeople, who have exhausted their own
food stocks while hosting tens of thousands of IDPs for months, are also
hungry for free food. They mingle freely with IDPs in and around the
camps. Many of them have set up tiny, makeshift shelters made of bramble
and straw to loiter in on distribution days in the hope of striking it
lucky.

New IDP arrivals in the town in recent weeks, combined with the movement
of IDPs and residents between camps means registering those “entitled” to
food is no easy task.

Some IDPs were registered in March and April. Efforts to re-register those
in Al-Junaynah started on Wednesday, when Islamic Relief went to Al-Riyad
camp in the early morning to distribute food tokens to each household. The
task required a police presence to guard against a possible influx from
outside the camp, the help of several different agencies, and total
secrecy until the last minute to avert rioting. If all went well, these
IDPs should receive food by between 15 July and 20 July, said one Islamic
Relief worker.

WFP registered about 40,000 people in the last week, Pierluigi Martinesi,
the overall coordinator of emergency operations in Western Darfur told
IRIN on Tuesday. By the end of the week, he said, a further 37,000 would
be registered in accessible government-controlled areas, and they would
all get their rations within a matter of days.

Facts and figures in Darfur are highly imprecise – at best very rough
estimates – but aid workers say there is a huge difference between the
number of people registered by WFP to receive food in the three localities
of Al Junaynah, Habillah and Kolbur – currently 249,000 are receiving
rations – and the actual number of IDPs.

In Krinding camp over 14,000 people are registered to receive food, but
humanitarian workers believed the total number of residents was actually
22,000. In Al-Riyad camp, just over 4,000 are registered against a total
number of at least 15,000, according to the aid workers. The discrepancies
mean that some of the IDPs have been watching their neighbours receive
food over the last three months – distributions started in April – while
they have been left with nothing.

“Those with cards receive food. We have no cards. Our community leaders
register us, but we get nothing,” said Zaynab in al-Riyad camp. She and
her seven children “frequently” had nothing to eat, she said.

IDPs and town residents have often looted food inside the camps after
distributions, an aid worker told IRIN.

International aid workers associated with three different organisations
told IRIN that upwards of 100,000 people in accessible
government-controlled areas in al-Junaynah, Habilah and Kulbus, all in
Western Darfur, had never been registered to receive food, or were only
being registered now.

Two sources told IRIN that an additional 100,000 people might well be in
areas not yet accessed by aid workers.

WFP says it is trying to improve its response capacity. “We’ve clearly
said before that we don’t have the capacity to feed or help all the IDPs
in Sudan,” said Peter Smerdon, a WFP spokesman. “We are trying to build up
our capacity.

“We register them as we find them. As they are registered, they are
incorporated into our ongoing distributions,” he added. But due to
shortages of staff and vehicles, delays were inevitable.

MALNUTRITION FIGURES RISING

Updated registration figures alone will still not solve Western Darfur’s
food problems, say aid workers. Food rations being distributed by an
implementing partner on behalf of WFP had been delivered three weeks late,
an aid worker told IRIN.

During a meeting of donors, UN agencies and NGOs, it emerged that by 5
July, only one-third of the food needed for June had been delivered by WFP
to its main implementing partner in Al-Junaynah. As a result, Save the
Children-US had only managed to distribute 38 percent of the necessary
food for June.

Compounding matters, the rations in Al-Junaynah town now contain 1,600
kcal whereas the normal amount is 2,100 kcal. “It is not even enough for
half a month, said Nur, a pregnant woman in Ardamata camp. “And the last
food came two months ago.”

The IDPs registered in Murnei had been receiving half-rations since
February – about 1,000 kcal per day instead of 2,100 kcal – a Medecins
Sans Frontieres worker told IRIN. “If they are only getting half-rations
now, it is very difficult to be optimistic, and I think it will increase
deaths during the rainy season,” she said.

According to MSF, global acute malnutrition rates around Al-Junaynah are
running at about 25 percent while severe acute malnutrition was estimated
at five percent. One aid worker described the IDPs as living “on a
precipice”. Children are weakening first, adults will be next, the aid
worker said.

“We don’t have enough food to give full rations, because the donor
response has been slow,” said Smerdon. He noted that the food-supply line
was “very weak” because WFP had only received one-third of the funding
needed for Darfur. Moreover, the average delay between a donor pledging
food and its arrival in the country where it was required was four months,
he said.

WFP has been asking donors for cash contributions so that it can buy
cereals in Sudan, which had had a bumper harvest, instead of importing
them, he added. Also, a combination of insecurity, lack of Sudanese trucks
to carry food, a lack of jet fuel in Sudan, and terrible roads meant that
delays in transporting food were inevitable. As a result no food had been
pre-positioned in Western Darfur. Instead, food was being distributed as
soon as it arrived.

WFP planned to introduce its own fleet of 200 long-haul trucks soon.
Airdrops of food will also begin, especially to areas cut off by rains.
“We are doing our best,” Smerdon said. “But that’s probably not much
consolation to people waiting for food.”