Distributions ease difficult conditions for people displaced yet again in Darfur
By Callie Long, Action by Churches Together (ACT)
Nyala, February 1, 2005 (ACT International) –It is one of those hypothetical questions that everyone dreads having to ever answer: If your house were burning down, what would you save? In south Darfur, this is a question that thousands of people caught up in the conflict in this part of Sudan have had to face over the last 18 months – sometimes more than once.
People living in a camp for displaced people in the Ta’asha area, where staff of the ACT/Caritas response to the emergency in the province were implementing projects, had been forced from their homes a first time by attacks from militia, intent on destroying their homes and their lives. Then, recently, even their temporary home in the camp came under attack. What do people save when faced with this reality? From the camp, people chose to save, among other items, food and non-food items belonging to the program that would have been distributed, as well as equipment.
A nutritionist with the ACT/Caritas program described how the residents of the camp in Ta’asha had brought the items with them to Belil camp – a journey of about a day by foot or with their rickety donkey carts. The items saved “included a mixing bowl, the scale used to weigh babies, the board used to measure children’s height, four fold-up tables, 12 benches, as well as 110 sacks of corn soya blend,” the staff member noted. “They also brought some concrete toilet slabs with them,” she added.
It was an act of kindness and an understanding of the importance of the humanitarian aid community’s presence in the province that staff of the ACT/Caritas program saw as an acknowledgement of the trust that had developed between them and those they continue to assist. “We felt it as a strong message from the parents that, ‘We really need your assistance to endure that our children survive,'” said Bjorg Mide, head of the ACT/Caritas program in Darfur.
The act takes on an even bigger significance against the bleak backdrop of Belil camp, a desolate place of sand and rocks and scrub bush about 20 km from Nyala, the capital of south Darfur. The slightest breeze whips up the sand and dust that clog one’s eyes, blast the skin and cover everyone and everything. There is no escaping it.
Belil camp is divided into two main areas – Belil A and Belil B. Belil B is again divided into smaller areas made up of displaced people who had arrived prior to June 2004 and those who had sought shelter there from July 2004 onwards. It is in the second part of Belil B that new arrivals congregate. Their new homes – makeshift shelters consisting of sticks, brush and bits of fabric or plastic – are scattered haphazardly across the bleak landscape. And still, everyday, newly displaced clusters of families straggle in. They come from places such as Helei, Yasin, Um Kurdus, Neira, Um Sheifa, Labado, Mahajariyah, Ishma, and Bashum, all places that have been laid waste by marauders.
Without fail, the plight of those who have been displaced by the conflict is a desperate one. Theirs is a story of a fear, of despair, of being destitute and brutalized and of being caught up in a complex power struggle over land and resources.
Belil has a long history offering shelter to people fleeing conflict. The A section of the camp looks more like a small village, with ordered rows of small houses, where Dinka people have settled since 1988 after they fled their homes in the south of the country during the bitter decades of long conflict between the north and the south.
Nearby are 300 neatly constructed shelters built last year by ACT/Caritas partner Sudan Social Development Organization (SUDO) for some 600 families. In Belil B, SUDO has also established a nutrition center, where children and mothers with small babies receive basic health care and nutritional support. The day of our visit, women and children lined up outside the compound. It is in places like these that the concept of patience takes on a new meaning – waiting outside the compound for their turn to be seen, and then, once inside the compound, wearily waiting again.
But away from the relatively resigned calm of the nutrition center, newly displaced people clustered around the ACT/Caritas staff visiting the area of the camp the day before a distribution of non-food items, urgently explaining that some of them had been without shelter and food for nearly two weeks. Tired, covered in a layer of dust, wrapping cloth around their faces to keep the sand at bay, stick thin – their anguish is painful to witness. Hearing the foreign voices, a 50-year-old woman struggled to her feet. She mimed that she was hungry. Her eyes, covered by cataracts, stared blankly. Her son, gently helping her sit down again, explained that he was worried about her and the fact that she could not see so well any more. There was a note of despair in his voice when he said, “She is my mother.”
A distribution such as the one ACT/Caritas staff did last week goes some way toward alleviating the suffering of people they assist, but it really is only a drop in the bucket that constitutes humanitarian aid in this part of the world. For every family that receives some assistance, thousands more people are simply out of reach of any form of assistance, according to the UN’s World Food Program. But at least the plastic sheeting, blankets, plastic mats, soap, cooking utensils and jerry cans for 2,041 registered families would at least offer minimal protection against the bitter cold of the night and help with the basics of preparing food and keeping clean.
“For the families who receive these basic items, it is an essential beginning in their struggle to re-establish their homes and regain a kind of ‘normality’ in their day-to-day lives,” said Mide.
Characterized as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, Darfur is also a protection crisis, challenging programs such as the ACT/Caritas one with the need to provide refuge to especially women and children against brutal acts of aggression and violence at all cost. But it is also a crisis characterized by people having lost their livelihoods and most of the few possessions they had in desperate flights to the relative safety of the camps, where they now remain trapped, too afraid to leave.
The conflict in Darfur, pitting the government and rebel forces against each other, is a complex one, visible in the destitute groups of displaced people fleeing again and again, and in the faces of women, men and children, the young and the old, who have witnessed and experienced atrocities that many find difficult to even talk about. The conflict is also in sharp contrast with a Sudan that only recently signed a comprehensive peace deal, ending a decades-long war between the south and the government controlled north of the country.
“But,” said Mide, “as ACT/Caritas, we sincerely want to reach the most vulnerable. Therefore, access remains a major concern for us. The humanitarian imperative always comes first, and sometimes that can lead to assisting vulnerable groups on both sides of the conflict. However, our assistance always reflects neutrality and impartiality.”
* Belil is one of several camps in south and west Darfur where ACT/Caritas is implementing programs in the field of nutrition, health, education, water and sanitation and psychosocial care, among others.
ACT is a global alliance of churches and related agencies working to save lives and support communities in emergencies worldwide. The ACT Coordinating Office is based with the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Switzerland.