Nairobi - As donor countries open fresh talks in Olso Monday
on helping the crisis-ravaged people of Sudan's Darfur province, aid
for the region is more urgently needed than ever.
Peace talks have changed little since the conflict broke out five
years ago, and the fragmentation of the different rebel groups means
that prospects of a negotiated settlement are ever more distant.
Millions meanwhile languish in the deceptive security of the
refugee camps, trapped and unable to return to their home villages.
And their numbers only grow.
Just a few days ago, soldiers of the joint United Nations and
African Union protection force had to evacuate villages in northern
Darfur which had got caught between the fronts of the rebels and
government troops.
The latest UN report on the Darfur situation is marked only by
pessimism, pointing to the number of refugees now at 2.5 million,
while 200,000 people are now believed to have been killed since the
fighting broke out in early 2003.
John Holmes, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs
and Emergency Relief Coordinator, says the number of people to have
died could be as high as 300,000 if you include victims of disease
and epidemics sweeping the refugee camps.
Rodolphe Adada, Joint AU-UN Special Representative for Darfur, has
repeatedly warned that too little is being done to ensure rapid
equipping and deployment of the 20,000-strong UNAMID force which is
detailed to protect civilians.
Three months after the mission began, barely 40 per cent of the
force had been deployed, Adada said last month in a report to the
United Nations, and full deployment would probably not be reached
before 2009.
Yet all the while, 'intensified violence and a polarization of the
conflict' was being observed. Latest airstrikes on villages in
northern Darfur were one example of this.
It is not just villagers who are threatened by the murdering,
pillaging and raping of government troops and their allied militias.
International aid organisations, too, are being threatened.
A few weeks ago a Doctors Without Borders clinic offering refuge
to hundreds of people fleeing the fighting was also attacked.
In addition, there have been increasing attacks by bandits, making
it evermore difficult to get supplies to the refugee camps.
A number of drivers of vehicles taking in World Food Programme
supplies have been killed since the beginning of the year, and 60 of
their vehicles have been hijacked.
'Attacks on the WFP supply lines are attacks on the most
vulnerable people in Darfur,' said WFP Director Josette Sheeran.
At the moment it is possible to bring in only 900 tons of food a
day to Darfur - just half the amount the WFP would want to be
shipping before the start of the rainy season.
This has meant having to to reduce the rations for some three
million people by 40 per cent since the beginning of May. The
refugees have been receiving a daily ration of 1,242 calories instead
of the 2,156 they had been getting before.
Amid the misery and violence, the people of Darfur at least have
the consolation - compared with other crisis regions - of Hollywood
stars and other celebrities drawing attention to their plight.
Darfur has at least kept more in the public eye than many of the
long forgotten conflict regions like Somalia or Congo.
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