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June 10, 2004 CRISIS IN SUDAN: EVERY REFUGEE CHILD UNDER FIVE FACE DEATH UNLESS UN ACTS Gethin Chamberlain : On The Sudanese-Chad Border NOT a single Sudanese child refugee under the age of five will be alive in six months unless there is immediate and dramatic international intervention, a senior United Nations official warned yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have poured over the border from Sudan into Chad in the past few months, driven out by a genocidal campaign against black African inhabitants of the Darfur region. Many are living in makeshift shelters, unable to get into established refugee camps, facing the constant threat of attack from the government-backed Janjaweed militias that have burned villages, killed thousands of people, raped women and girls and taken young children as slaves. The UN has described the situation in Darfur - where something in the region of a million people have been driven from their homes and estimates have placed the potential death toll at 300,000 - as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and the imminent arrival of the rainy season threatens to trigger a fresh catastrophe among the refugees who have sought shelter in Chad. Aid experts estimated that around a quarter of the refugees in Chad would die before the end of the year unless aid could be put in place before the imminent rains begin in earnest. That figure includes 38,600 children under the age of five and 10,000 other vulnerable people, including pregnant women. It's believed 25,000 would suffer severe malnutrition. Yesterday, the deputy director of the UN World Food Programme in Chad, Jean -Charles Dei, warned that the rains would make roads impassable for aid lorries bringing in food, leading to malnutrition and ultimately starvation for thousands of the refugees. He said the rains would also bring inevitable outbreaks of disease, including cholera and measles. "There will be a tragedy if nothing happens," Mr Dei said. "I don't think any of the children under the age of five will make it, and the pregnant women too. For those who are under five there is no chance. They will die from starvation." The UN has appealed, so far unsuccessfully, for more than dollars 30 million before the end of this year to prevent a catastrophe. UNICEF, which alone says it needs dollars 1.6 million to tackle the immediate crisis, has warned that with the rainy season about to start in earnest, the situation is now critical. Aid agencies working with refugees along the border say that about 200,000 people have crossed into Chad, driven from their homes in the Darfur region of Sudan by the murderous onslaught of the Janjaweed militia, backed by Sudanese government forces, including jets and helicopters, which have bombed villages. The influx has overwhelmed the existing resources and appeals for fresh financial assistance to buy food and medicines have been unsuccessful. The World Food Project has been able to move less than a third of the food needed to sustain the refugees in the established camps. Other refugees are gathered in small groups strung out along a 400-mile stretch of border and, once the rains arrive, they will be entirely cut off from further aid. In the southern region, where the rains have already started and roads are becoming difficult to negotiate, there is enough food stockpiled to last two months, although the rains can last six months. In the central region and in the north, the stockpiles are expected to last only one month, even if there is not another influx of refugees across the border. In those regions, the rains can last for three or four months. The situation is worst in the Bahai region in the north, on the edge of the Sahara desert, where thousands of refugees are camped out without proper shelter or access to water or food. The UN estimates that there are 105,600 refugees who have been moved into camps and 28,400 who have made their own way from the holding areas on the border into the camps, but that another 59,700 are scattered along the border. An outbreak of cholera, which is endemic during the rainy season, would kill thousands of refugees cut off from medical assistance. The rains will also bring mosquitoes and malaria, and there are serious concerns about the possibility of an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus. Aid workers report that attacks on the refugees have continued, with regular cross-border incursions by the Janjaweed - Arab fighters who attack on horseback or on camels - into Chad. Mr Dei said the situation was desperate. He explained: "We don't have food in the pipeline. We have no money, we have nothing." He said that, despite talk of a ceasefire between the Sudanese government and rebel groups opposed to the Khartoum regime, the killing and looting were continuing because people were still coming across the border daily. "We still need strong intervention, peacekeeping troops, monitors to stop the Janjaweed coming over the border, but if there is no money and no resources, nothing can be done." Aid agencies despair about the lack of international assistance to prevent a greater humanitarian disaster, blaming the focus on Iraq and a lack of public awareness for the shortage of funds. "There is a lack of interest from some main donors, maybe because these people do not have diamonds in the ground or oil," Mr Dei said. "There is a saying: the best political friend is an economic friend. But this disaster can be avoided. We just need to act now." Cyrille Niameogo, the UNICEF representative in Chad, said that, apart from malnutrition, disease was also a serious danger. "We have no money, and without money we will not be able to immunise children, and they will be exposed to diseases and a lot of them will die," he said. "There will be no safe drinking water and there will be cholera, and that is the problem." He said UNICEF, which has appealed for dollars 1.6 million in urgent aid and a total of dollars 6.8 million by the end of the year, needed money to buy vaccines, especially the measles vaccine. "That is the most important disease to control, because otherwise it will kill many children," Mr Dei said. "We haven't got the money - if we have the money we can get them in 48 hours. If we don't get money people will die. The situation in Bahai is terrible. This is the critical period." Rebel leaders have warned that they will attempt to take the fight to the Sudanese government if the ceasefire is not respected. Hassam Khamees, one of the leaders of the new National Movement for Reform and Development, said that, despite the attempts by the rebel groups to protect those villagers remaining in Darfur, attacks were continuing. "They burn the villages in Darfur and they have attacked across the border into Chad," he said. "Civilians are suffering in Darfur, and women and children are dying every day. Always they are attacking." Speaking in the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, he said: "There is disease and movement of refugees and there are no medicines. "Even in Chad there are no doctors and the rainy season will cause more problems. In 15 to 20 days' time, people will be dying; we think 7,000 or 8,000 people in the refugee camps." Mr Khamees said the depopulation of rural Darfur was almost complete, with refugees fleeing into Chad and Libya to escape the killing and into the main towns in the region to throw themselves on the mercy of their relatives. He accused the Sudanese government of attempting to turn the conflict into a religious war. "The government is saying that the black Africans are Christians. "Maybe they think that the Arabs are more religious, but I think we are all Sudanese. I am a Muslim and everyone is Muslim in Darfur. This is genocide, racist genocide." He warned that attempts by the Sudanese government to suppress dissent in Darfur would backfire. "They are facing a big problem because we have the power to reach Khartoum," he said. "Because of the civilian suffering, we ask for a political solution, but the Sudanese government don't want that." He added: "If there is no solution we can attack Khartoum. We will only stop war if we get our rights."
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Copyright ©2011 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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