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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
SUDAN: Rural communities in Darfur facing food crisis - ICRC
NAIROBI, 19 Oct 2004 (IRIN) - Rural communities across western Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region are facing a food crisis that could be worse than the famines that hit the region in the 1980s and 90s, an assessment team of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.
The team evaluated food security in 20 rural villages across Darfur in September and concluded that agriculture had collapsed, and a combination of insecurity and drought had destroyed traditional coping mechanisms of communities in Darfur. In many cases, farmers' seeds and tools had been looted and their cattle stolen.
Commenting on the ICRC findings, Peter Smerdon, spokesperson of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Nairobi, told IRIN: "An estimated 1.89 million people are currently in need of food aid in Darfur."
He said that WFP had managed to deliver food to an estimated 1.3 million people, although the agency intended to reach two million by the end of the year. "We expect the number of people in need of food assistance to rise," said Smerdon.
Farmers had resorted to using what little income they had to buy food from the local markets, ICRC said, adding that the trend had led to a dramatic rise in the price of food. Millet and sorghum, for example, were now two or three times more expensive than they were last year.
Many families were now relying on wild food, the ICRC report added. The ICRC assessment team reported that in some cases, wild food constituted as much as 85 percent of people's food intake. Villagers also risked being attacked by armed groups when they went to gather wild foods in the bushes.
Smerdon said WFP was awaiting the results of the first comprehensive inter-agency survey on food security and nutritional needs across Darfur. The findings of the survey, carried out in August and September by WFP, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Children's Fund, Save the Children and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were expected next week.
The survey, Smerdon added, would "produce the most accurate numbers on the need for food assistance in Darfur so far - covering the needs of the rural communities as well as those of internally-displaced people".
The United Nations said on Monday it had continued to receive reports of attacks against internally displaced persons and harassment of relief workers in Darfur.
Radia Achouri, spokesperson for the UN Advance Mission in Sudan, told IRIN that relief workers had been harassed in separate incidents in North Darfur State, while, on 5 October, unidentified assailants raided Tasha in South Darfur, killing two people and wounding nine.
The war in Darfur pits the Sudanese government troops and militias, allegedly allied to the government, against rebels fighting to end what they have called marginalisation and discrimination of the region's inhabitants by the state.
The conflict has displaced an estimated 1.45 million people and sent another 200,000 fleeing across the border into Chad. The UN has described the Darfur problem as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
The ICRC report can be found at: www.icrc.org
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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