Head of WFP launches fresh aid appeal for Darfur refugees

The head of the World Food Programme (WFP), James Morris, appealed to the international community on Monday to help more than 100,000 refugees from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, after touring some of their camps in the semi-desert of eastern Chad. “This is just one of the most awful humanitarian crises in the world. When this many people in the most belligerent, mean spirited way are chased from their homes… They are scared to death,” Morris told IRIN. He particularly appealed for aid to continue airlifting food to the refugees once the onset of the rainy season in June makes the unpaved roads to eastern Chad impassable. At Tolom, one of seven camps hosting Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad, women dressed in brightly coloured cloth huddled together on the sand, while their menfolk gathered under the shade of a rare tree while they all waited for vital food rations. “Everything has been taken away from these people. This is tragic,” Morris said. The Tolom camp is over crowded, with nearly twice as many refugees as it was originally intended for. Faiza Ali Hussein is 21 and comes from Agamra in Sudan where she was a teacher. She said she was chased out of her home along with her husband, a teacher in a Koranic school and her three children. Her husband's second wife and her nine children fled with them. “The Janjaweed militia came with their horses and burned our possessions and looted. Then the government Anotovs [Russian built planes] bombarded our house – I saw people lying dead,” Hussein told IRIN. After fleeing by donkey and begging food to stay alive, Hussein says that she and her family were lucky to be picked up by a truck belonging to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, which brought them to Tolom. “We have been living here for three months under plastic sheeting that was given to us. I am happy to have fled the war,” she said. “The Tolom camp was originally planned for 7,500 people. It is now hosting more than 12,000, said Vincent Dupin of Norwegian Church Aid, which is building wells, latrines and other facilities at Tolom. More refugees continue to arrive at Tolom daily. “Everyday new people are coming on foot, on donkeys, in convoys,” Alfred Demotibaye the Tolom camp manager, who works for the Chadian branch of Caritas, told IRIN. According to WFP more than one million Sudanese have been affected by fighting in Darfur, western Sudan. Relief agency estimates of those who have fled across the border range from 95,000 to 110,000. International human rights organisations accuse the Arab-dominated government of Sudan of supporting an ethnic cleansing terror campaign against the black residents of Darfur. Khartoum has denied such reports, adding that it has nothing to hide from a UN investigation team that arrived in Darfur at the end of April. The WFP launched a US$ 19.4 million feeding programme for the refugees in December 2003. To date WFP has received US$ 14.7 million from Canada, Finland, Germany, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, the UK and the US. But as the rainy season approaches, WFP and partners are trying to stockpile enough food to feed 95,000 refugees for four months – that is to last them until the end of the rains in September. During the wet season, Chad’s unpaved roads are churned into mud and become impassable. Morris revealed that a special air service to distribute food supplies to the remote refugee camps would run out of funding by the end of June. “Without immediate contributions,” warned Morris, “the air service will be interrupted within two months, right at the onset of the rainy season when roads become totally impassable.” Chad, a land locked largely desert country of 1.3 million square km - around three times the size of France - has no railways and less than 300 km of paved roads.