SUDAN: While the war of words continues on whether genocide is taking place in the Sudanese province of Darfur, the humanitarian situation is deteriorating, with a sharp fall in the numbers receiving food assistance due to the impact of the rains and continuing insecurity writes Denis McClean in Geneva.
Despite air drops and an intensified effort to expand its logistics on the ground, the UN World Food Programme is now only reaching about 35 per cent, or 415,000, of the 1.2 million people estimated to be in need of assistance each month
The nutritional situation remains precarious for many thousands of those displaced by the killing, rape and looting carried out by the Janjaweed Arab militias as part of the government response to a rebellion launched last year by the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement representing the indigenous farming population of Darfur. USAID forecasts that as many as 350,000 people could die by the end of the year.
In the Kalma camp for the displaced, close to Nyala, the provincial capital of south Darfur, the Médicins Sans Frontières nutritional centre recently reported 570 cases of severe malnutrition in its therapeutic feeding programme, with admissions running at the rate of 20 per day.
In addition, there were 2,000 cases of moderate malnutrition being treated in supplementary feeding programmes, with admissions running at 60 per day.
In north Darfur, Concern is responding to gross malnutrition rates of about 15 to 20 per cent in nine camps for displaced people where about 10,000 people are dependent on the Irish agency for food.
Concern has chartered 32 relief flights into Darfur in the last month. It is also meeting the water and sanitation needs of a further 80,000 people.
Concern's Mr Tom Arnold said that while there have been some improvements on the ground with more aid agencies present in the last two months, there was an awareness that when the rainy season ends in the next month, the numbers in need could rise to as many as two million people, given the disruption caused to the planting season by the massive displacement of people.
WFP is scaling up the air drop operation to six Ilyushin and five Antonov aircraft from just two planes at the beginning of August. Since August 1st, air drops have reached almost 100,000 people with over 2,000 tons of food.
Food distributions also got under way for the first time at the end of August to areas controlled by the Sudan Liberation Army rebels who started their insurgency against the Khartoum government early last year in a bid for greater autonomy and more equitable sharing of resources.
As the rains continue to turn much of the rudimentary road network into a quagmire on the Sudanese side of the border, there has been some good operational news from the Chad side where there are 200,000 refugees from Darfur in camps along the border.
These camps started to receive fresh supplies of food over the weekend, thanks to a pioneering WFP convoy of 20 trucks which took 23 days to reach the Chad border from the Libyan Mediterranean port of Benghazi, a feat which not even Bob Geldof could pull off during the Sahel food crisis 20 years ago when Libya and Chad were engaged in a fierce border dispute.
The most arduous part of the journey was the 12-day crossing of the Sahara, which ended last Wednesday night when they arrived under military escort in the town of Bahai with 440 tons of wheat flour, enough for 30,000 people for one month.
It is taking food convoys a minimum of three weeks to reach Darfur from Port Sudan and often they have been forced to abandon their loads because the roads are impassable. Recently six WFP and Sudanese Red Crescent staff were taken prisoner by Darfur rebels but later released.
Food convoys have also been disrupted by intermittent fighting despite a declared ceasefire; the two sides remain deadlocked over a political solution.
Meanwhile, the Americans are hoping that the UN Security Council will pass a new resolution on Darfur later this week following a finding by the US State Department that genocide is taking place in the region.
This contention is hotly disputed by the Sudanese government, which has accused the US government of trying to win African-American votes in the upcoming Presidential election.
It is clear from Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell's testimony last week to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the US is pressing for a greatly increased African Union military force on the ground to ensure the safety of the local population and a ban on Sudanese military flights over Darfur. The US is also pressing for a review of Khartoum's compliance linked to possible sanctions against Sudan's petroleum industry, a measure unlike to be supported by all members of the Security Council.
The UN launched a new initiative at the weekend to raise funds for its operations throughout Sudan, which are dramatically underfunded with only $288 million received against a total appeal of $722 million.
The UN's Mr Mohamed Sahnoun, visited Gulf States to encourage more support: no Arab states figure on the contributions list for WFP operations in Darfur.