Jan Egeland warns UN operations massively underfunded

The UN’s humanitarian point-man, Jan Egeland, warned that a UN operation to assist quarter of a million people who fled to eastern Chad to escape fighting has only received a tiny fraction of the funds needed. Most of those in need of help ran from brutal terror campaigns in the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan. Others are displaced by fighting in Chad or are refugees from war over the border in Central African Republic. “Only 16 percent of the humanitarian funds required to feed these people have been received so far,” Egeland, the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement. Egeland’s comments came as he visited camps at Goz Beida and Goroukom in the searing desert of eastern Chad that house more than 10,000 of the 50,000 Chadians aid workers say have been displaced by growing insecurity in the eastern provinces. He also met representatives of the estimated 200,000 Sudanese refugees. In meetings with refugee leaders and local Chadian officials Egeland discussed the division of assistance between displaced Chadians and refugees, said an aide travelling with Egeland. The UN’s funds are meant for refugee assistance and providing aid to the Chadians is stretching already thin resources. According to the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR, the number of Chadians turning up and asking for assistance at the Goz Beida refugee camp has tripled since a run of rebel attacks in mid April that culminated with an attack on the capital N'djamena. Visiting the eastern town Abeche less than a week after a Spanish aid worker with the UN children’s agency was critically injured in a carjacking, Egeland also listened to UN and NGO staff concerns about security, the aide said. Meetings with government officials in the Chadian capital N’djamena scheduled for Wednesday afternoon were postponed until Thursday after sandstorms forced Egeland to spend the night in Abeche. Egeland’s trip to Chad is the last stop on a five-day mission to the region that already took him to camps in South Darfur. Egeland also met with Sudanese officials and UN and non-governmental workers in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. The tour comes hard on the heels of a peace agreement signed between the largest Darfur militia and Khartoum in the Nigerian capital Abuja that analysts say could stabilise the region if it is implemented fully.