UN APPEALS FOR MORE FUNDS TO MEET MOST URGENT HUMANITARIAN NEEDS IN SUDAN

UN Appeals for More Funds to Meet Most Urgent Humanitarian Needs in Sudan

KHARTOUM/GENEVA, 25 August (OCHA) -- The UN today warned that $434 million out of $722 million are still required to respond to Sudan’s most urgent humanitarian needs through the end of the year. 

“While the number of people in critical need of humanitarian assistance has skyrocketed in Darfur in recent months, I implore the international community to also remember the plight of millions of vulnerable people struggling to survive all over the country”, cautioned the United Nations’ Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan Manuel Aranda Da Silva.

The revised United Nations appeal released today outlines the funds needed from donors through the end of the year in order to tackle three top humanitarian priorities in Sudan:  provide life-saving and life-sustaining assistance and protection to internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host communities in Darfur; provide assistance to spontaneous returnees and their immediate reintegration in South Sudan; and ensure that remaining life-saving and life-sustaining humanitarian needs in the rest of Sudan are met.  All of these aid operations remain grossly underfunded.

A mere $17 million of the $153 million required has been received to assist IDPs spontaneously returning to southern Sudan, primarily from the north.  As of August this year, an estimated 100,000 people had voluntarily made the journey back to their homelands in the south in anticipation of the signing of a peace agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

This month, an interagency assessment team confirmed that more than 50 of these returnees died from starvation.  Already strained populations in the south are now forced to share scarce resources with returnees, the overwhelming majority in northern Bahr Al Ghazal, and agencies desperately need funds to help them reintegrate into their communities.  Once the rainy season ceases next month, aid agencies predict that tens of thousands more people may continue moving to the south, which could result in a humanitarian emergency.

Furthermore, another $110 million is still needed to assist more than three million people living under extremely fragile conditions in the southern, central and eastern regions of the country.

While access has increased in the south, some areas are still plagued by insecurity and hampered humanitarian access.  In the lakes area of Bahr Al Ghazal, for example, thousands of people have been displaced and livelihoods disrupted by a series of conflicts between clans of the Dinka ethnic group.

There are also early signs of declining food security in parts of south Sudan.  According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), a poor maize harvest, especially in parts of eastern Equatoria and Bahr Al Jabal, is likely to increase food insecurity through the end of the year.  Conflict in eastern Equatoria could further worsen the food security.  At present, the hardest-hit areas are concentrated in northern Bahr Al Ghazal, Upper Nile, Jonglei and UnityStates.

In addition, more than 500,000 severely food insecure people in western Kordofan, eastern Kordofan, Red Sea State and Kassala are receiving vital school feeding and food-for-work assistance.  Nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees living in the eastern States of Kassala, Gedaref, Sennar and Gezira since the 70s and 80s also require continued aid from UNHCR and other agencies.

A staggering $188 million is still needed to keep 1.5 million displaced and other conflict-affected people afloat in Darfur alone.  The United Nations predicts 2 million people could need humanitarian aid by October.

The overall funds required for the Darfur crisis have been revised to $365 million, up from $250 million requested in March.  The additional $115 million will mainly be used for World Food Programme (WFP) food delivery air operations and to provide aid for an increased caseload of conflicted-affected people.

“Aid agencies averted an apocalyptic catastrophe by gaining access to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by war over the past couple of months, but the humanitarian crisis is far from over”, Aranda Da Silva said.  “Hundreds of thousands of families displaced by terrorizing militias are completely dependant on relief for survival.  Many are still empty-handed and with interagency assessments underway, we could see the amount of people needing help rise exponentially over the next weeks and months.”

Agencies -- there are more than 4,000 international and Sudanese aid workers on the ground in Darfur now -- have scaled up their operations enormously over the past two months.  However, vital shelter, food and other assistance are still direly needed.  Critical health and water and sanitation projects run by agencies such as United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are of particular importance in preventing the spread of diseases.

Security is of paramount concern to hundreds of thousands of IDPs.  Reports of attacks against civilians continue to emerge.  The majority of the 1.2 million IDPs in Darfur who fled their homes earlier this year after Arab militias launched a scorched earth campaign of violence and intimidation against a mainly Muslim African civilian population perceived to be rebel sympathizers. 

“These families who were forced to flee their homes and abandon their fields completely missed this year’s planting season.  Even if the security situation were to be resolved in the near future, we’re looking at providing aid at least through late 2005”, Aranda Da Silva added.

Locusts, which hatched in North-West Africa, could further exacerbate the Darfur crisis.  Now in Chad the swarms are reportedly dangerously close to the Sudan border near west Darfur. 

“The swarms move like a bulldozer, destroying everything in their path, including crops and grazing vegetation for livestock.  They recently swept across Mauritania, ravaging 80 per cent of the country’s crops”, said the Food and Agricultural Organization’s (FAO) Sudan Representative Abdulla Tahir Bin Yehia.  “Due to conflict and financial constraints, it is very difficult to monitor the situation in Darfur.”

The United Nations is preparing measures to assist the fight against a potential locust infestation in Sudan and a project in this respect will be launched in the coming weeks.

Agencies taking part in the revised appeal include FAO, International Organization for Migration (IOM), Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNICEF, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) WFP and WHO.

For further information, please call:  Elizabeth Byrs, OCHA Geneva, tel.:  +41 22 917 2653, mobile:  +41 79 473 4570; Stephanie Bunker, OCHANY, tel.:  +1 917 892 1679, mobile:  +1 917 892 1679; Jennifer Abrahamson, OCHA Khartoum, tel.:  +249 91 216 7599 or visit the web site: http://www.unsudanig.org.

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