Save the Children warns of urgent needs

Chronic food insecurity resulting from civil war, displacement and drought was continuing to spread throughout Sudan, threatening a “major catastrophe”, the NGO Save the Children Fund (UK) (SCF) warned on Tuesday. Late and erratic rainfall had hit harvests of sorghum - the staple food for many Sudanese - and populations in Northern and Western Darfur, in Kordofan, the Red Sea hills, Eastern Equatoria and northern Bahr al-Ghazal were now all severely affected, it said in a press statement. Urgent food and water supplies were needed immediately for an estimated three million drought- and war-affected people in Sudan if a catastrophe was to be prevented, the statement added. SCF said flight bans had restricted access to 36,000 people displaced by fighting between government forces and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army around oilfields in southern Unity State (Wahdah)/Western Upper Nile. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) stated on 3 August, that Government of Sudan flight denials had increased over the last few months, and were hindering humanitarian operations in parts of Unity State (Wahdah)/Western Upper Nile, where rising numbers of internally displaced people now required food aid. [for the full SCF statement, go to: http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/vLCE/Sudan?OpenDocument&StartKey=Sudan&Expandview]