POPULATION-SUDAN: Emergency Food Arrives in Strife-torn South

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Feb 26 1998 (IPS) - The long-awaited emergency food for thousands of displaced people has arrived in southern Sudan’s strife-torn Bahr el Ghazal region, United Nations officials in the Kenyan capital say.

“The U.N. World Food Programme has just succeeded in delivering urgently needed food by road to northern Bahr el Ghazal, marking the first time that the United Nations has managed to send food so far north by road from Uganda,” said a WFP statement, made available to IPS on Thursday.

It said the first 120 tonnes of sorghum from a WFP convoy of 400 tonnes arrived in the Mapel area of the southern Sudan on Sunday. This 120 tonnes of food will sustain 51,000 people for six days.

“This first road convoy is a great achievement, especially considering our extreme difficulties in delivering food to Bahr el Ghazal by air,” said David Fletcher, head of WFP’s Southern Sudan operation and deputy coordinator for Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS).

“Unfortunately the situation is still serious, because only one-quarter of the population in northern Bahr el Ghazal can be reached by road.”

On Feb. 4, the government of Sudan suspended flights by OLS relief agencies to Bahr el Ghazal where 100,000 people have been displaced by recent fighting in the areas, and are in urgent need of food and other types of assistance.

“The ban — imposed by the government of Sudan due to the continuing fighting in Wau, Aweil and Gogrial between the Sudanese army and the Sudan People Liberation Army (SPLA) — has taken its toll mainly on the children and the elderly. Malnutrition, and dehydration cases caused by diarrhoea, are escalating,” said Wolfgang Jamann of the aid agency ‘World Vision Sudan’ in a statement last week.

He said the fighting, which began on Jan. 29, has disrupted relief interventions, destroyed markets and caused massive internal displacement.

It is estimated that the conflict has displaced 103,000 people in need of assistance. Along with 248,200 already assessed as requiring emergency food assistance in February, the total number of people who now require assistance is over 351,400.

“Prior to the fighting, the displaced population was receiving relief food. Largely due to insecurity, and drought in 1997, most farmers cultivated little or nothing, while others lost what they had cultivated,” said Jamann.

He said the flight suspension, whose end is not in sight, could result in a heightened crisis calling for massive food support until the 1999 August harvest.

WFP says it has been making every possible effort to increase food deliveries by road to southern Sudan. Greater use of road transport will also help to reduce the high costs of food airlifts and airdrops, but according to Fletcher, air operations will still be necessary to deliver food to many inaccessible areas, especially during the rainy season.

“If the flights suspension is not lifted for six months, it will have a dire consequence on the civilian population,” said Fletcher, when launching an appeal for southern Sudan here last week. He said the suspension would hamper the ongoing polio vaccination in the region.

WFP says it plans to take advantage of the remaining four to five weeks of dry season weather to send more road convoys with food to needy areas of Bahr el Ghazal, and is currently bolstering its food stocks in the border town of Koboko, Uganda in preparation.

As part of the 1998 United Nations appeal for Sudan launched last week, WFP has requested 59.4 million U.S. Dollars for food aid and transport which includes airlifting and airdropping operations. WFP estimates that 75,350 tonnes of emergency food aid will be required in 1998 for 2.4 million war and drought-affected civilians, mainly women, children and the elderly.

The 59.4 million U.S. dollar appeal is part of the overall 109.4 million dollars requested by the OLS to meet the humanitarian needs of more than four million war and drought- affected Sudanese in 1998.

An assessment conducted in late 1997 indicated that hundreds of thousands of Sudanese will be unable to survive without food aid, especially during the primary food deficit period from April to August.

Last year the United Nations received only 40 percent of the 120.8 million U.S. Dollars required for emergency activities in Sudan, seriously compromising its ability to respond to the growing humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) received 45.8 percent of the 46.8 million U.S. Dollars it requested, while WFP received 50 percent of its total funding requirements for 1997.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees received only 29.9 percent from its 1997 appeal, while the World Health Organisation (WHO), Food and Agricultural Organisation and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) all received under one percent of their funding requests in 1997.

“I think the dwindling funding is attributable to donor fatigue,” said an aid worker here on Thursday. “These days we receive less and less funding from the donors.”