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14-03-2024
GENEVA: Food aid for hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Chad, some of whom are close to starvation, will be suspended next month without more funding, the World Food Program (WFP) said on Tuesday.
Since conflict broke out in Sudan nearly a year ago, more than half a million Sudanese refugees have fled to Chad across the long desert border and the country is now one of Africa’s main refugee hot spots with more than 1 million in total but the WFP says it is struggling to feed them all and many are already skipping meals. Nearly half of Sudanese refugee children under five-years-old are suffering from severe anemia.
“We’ve already cut our operations in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, leaving hungry people close to starvation,” said Pierre Honnorat, WFP’s Representative and Country Director in Chad. “We need donors to prevent the situation from becoming an all-out catastrophe.”
A supply route from Chad into Sudan’s Darfur, where hunger is worsening, is also at risk due to funding shortages, WFP said.
With more resources, WFP would be able to position food stocks ahead of the rainy season when some refugee populations in Chad get cut off from supplies by muddy rivers. The agency is urgently calling for $242 million to ensure ongoing support for the next six months.
A mother who skips meals so there is enough food for her two children. A 60-year-old man who eats one meal a day, a lump of dough made of flour and water. People venturing out from their homes in a desperate search for food at the risk of being hit by artillery shells.
Dozens of accounts like these gathered by Reuters show how many people are going hungry in parts of Sudan worst hit by the war that erupted last April, including areas in the capital Khartoum and in the western region of Darfur. The number of Sudanese facing emergency levels of hunger one stage before famine has more than tripled in a year to almost five million, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a globally recognized food security index, opens new tab.
In Sudan’s capital, hundreds of thousands of people face a daily struggle to find food as communal kitchens they depend on are threatened by dwindling supplies and a communications blackout across much of the country in recent weeks. In Darfur, some areas haven’t received any aid since the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary, went to war almost a year ago.
Aid agencies, which say they have been unable to deliver food to many areas of the war-torn country, are warning that hunger is set to worsen as Sudan’s April-July lean season approaches, the time of year when food availability is low because farmers are planting. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
