UN scaling back Darfur food aid

[951]

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is scaling back its projects in northern Darfur in Sudan because of deteriorating security.

The WFP says 50,000 people will be affected by the suspension of aid.

The decision comes after two aid workers from Save the Children were killed on Sunday by a land mine.

An estimated 50,000 people have died in 20 months in Darfur, in what the UN says is the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and the US calls genocide. ..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3740696.stm

[MikeG]

1. We should be sending our troops there.

[hughee99]

2. Why?

We've seen what happens when our troops get sent to other places unilaterally. If the UN feels that troops should be sent there, then the UN should request troops from all nations. Going in unilaterally is just wrong. We don't want to be the occupiers in another nation.

[Bridget Burke]

3. Yeah, there's no oil there....

So why should we bother.

[hughee99]

4. Is that sarcasm directed toward me,

or am I just reading too much into it?

[gottaB]

5. Going to hell in a handbasket

There are hundreds of thousands more refugees this month. To make matters worse, there appears to be widespread hunger among the non-displaced population. The latest Darfur situation report (doc) from OCHA mentioned a nutritional survey carried out by Action Against Hunger in Nyala:

Action Contre le Faim (ACF) released the preliminary results of its nutritional survey carried out in Nyala town on 9 Oct. The survey, which included the resident populations as well as the IDPs, found that children aged 6 to 29 months showed Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rates of 31.36% (Z-score). Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) results for the same age group indicated a 5.2%. The MSF survey conducted in Aug. in Kalma camp found similar results with almost a quarter of the children under five, 23.6%, were malnourished, 3.3% of them severely malnourished. Agencies working in these areas are concerned about the results and are planning to respond with specific targeted interventions. Among the interventions, for Kalma camp, agencies agreed last week to register IDPs on arrival, to reserve a stock of food in the camp to facilitate the immediate distribution of food to the new arrivals, to require new arrivals to check into the health facilities on arrival and to regularly conduct home visits in order to identify malnourished children that failed to check into the health facilities.

The situation for refugees (idps) in other parts of Sudan could also get very ugly:

http://allafrica.com/stories/200410130176.html


How to help:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/06/24/darfur8954.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3793577.stm

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=106x8499#8916