UNHCR to establish first camp for Sudanese

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday that it planned to open its first camp to cater for the tide of Sudanese refugees flooding in eastern Chad next week. UNHCR spokesman Helene Caux, told IRIN by satellite telephone from the eastern town of Abeche that so far one site, 55 km from the Chad-Sudan border, had been selected to host 9,000 refugees fleeing the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur province. The camp, situated three km from the village of Farchana should open on 15 January, she said. It would aim to accommodate the most vulnerable refugees seeking safety in the semi-desert of eastern Chad, notably women, children and the elderly, Caux said. UNHCR estimates that about 95,000 Sudanese refugees have arrived in eastern Chad since the conflict in Darfur started to hot up in April last year. However, a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) official in N'Djamena told IRIN: "It is very difficult to give precise figures for the number of refugees because they are not in camps and no-one has so far tried to count them all." Delphine Marie, a UNHCR spokeswoman in Geneva said there had been a “massive exodus” of 30,000 refugees from Darfur during December alone. So far the refugees have been scattered in small groups along the remote and sparsely populated border area and have received little in the way of external assistance. On Monday, UNHCR described the exodus of refugees into Chad as an “invisible emergency” which had “received little international help or attention.” One Chadian journalist who visited eastern Chad recently said most of the refugees were underfed and survived on whatever they could scavenge from the sparse bush. By day, he said, they were scoured by a hot dry wind. But at night, he added, the adult refugees and their older children were forced to huddle round bonfires while the temperature plummeted to freezing. The journalist said families dug holes in the ground to provide a crude shelter for their youngest children Caux said UNHCR, Medecins Sans Frontieres Holland and Belgium, and the German relief agency GTZ were already present in the border area. She said they were digging three wells and latrines for refugees at the Farchana camp site. They were also providing tents for the camp and were preparing plots of land for small-scale farming activities, she added. Caux said UNHCR was meanwhile investigating the feasibility of setting up two more camps; one near Adre, the main border crossing point between Sudan and Chad, and another at Guereda, about 150 km to the north. She said that on Monday UNHCR ended a three-day distribution of non-food items, such as blankets, mats and kitchen utensils to 13,250 refugees in the district of Birak. A second distribution of both food and non-food items to 13,000 people would begin on Wednesday in the localities of Guimeze, Tjoran and Birak, she added. These are situated between Abeche and the border, 170 km to the east. "It is important to associate the distribution of non-food items with food so that the refugees don’t re-sell the items for food," Caux told IRIN. On Monday, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it had flown out a consignment of 22,000 blankets for distribution to the refugees to help protect them from freezing temperatures during the cold desert nights. The 760 km road from N'Djamena, the capital of landlocked Chad, to Abeche, the main town in the east, is in very poor condition. Caux said relief agencies were flying food for the refugees by plane into Abeche and distributing it locally by truck. The Sudanese government is close to negotiating a comprehensive peace settlement with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the main rebel group in southern Sudan, at talks in Kenya. However, a separate conflict has been developing since April last year in Darfur, to the north of the area where the SPLA has traditionally been active. Like the southern conflict, this pits Arabs from the north of the Sudan against southern blacks. However, whereas in the south there is a strong christian tradition, in Darfur, both sides in the forgotten war are muslim. The Sudanese government and its tribal militia allies are engaged in an escalating war with two rebel movements in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the smaller Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Relief workers in the region say the conflict has led to the widespread killing of civilians and the looting and burning of entire villages. These activities have led in turn to a massive displacement of local people, of whom an increasing number are seeking refuge in Chad. Kamel Morjan, the deputy director general of UNHCR for West and Central Africa, said during a visit to Chad last week that he reckoned there were 600,000 internally displaced people within Darfur, who were receiving no assistance whatsoever. Several tribes are present on both sides of the border, including the Zagawa ethnic group of Chadian President Idriss Deby, who is from Abeche. Deby hosted peace talks between the warring Sudanese factions in N'Djamena last month, but they broke down on December 15. Since then several major battles have been reported in Darfur.