Darfur IDPs face food shortage

Since the rains started two weeks ago, displaced people in Western Darfur’s capital, Al-Junaynah, have become increasingly frustrated by a lack of food aid. While rations have been distributed to some of the internally displaced persons (IDPs), others have not received any. The World Food Programme (WFP) has been registering IDPs and trying to provide them with food. However, it says its efforts have been affected by a shortage of staff and resources. The agency has been trying to improve its capacity to respond to IDPs' needs, while appealing for funds to do so. In the meantime, thousands of IDPs squatting in Al-Junaynah and in the four camps around the town have had to fend for themselves. "I have been displaced for seven months and never been assisted," said Ali, who lives in Al-Riyad camp. "Our women go and wash clothes or do domestic work and get paid, so we can eat," he said. "I came here six months ago and I haven’t received food yet, because I’m not registered," said Fatumah, an old woman in Krinding camp. When she can, Fatumah does manual labour to feed herself and her family, carrying bricks or sand for local construction workers, grinding grain, washing clothes in the town or collecting firewood and selling it. Maryam, another woman, said her family had been displaced for three months. She had never received food, so she worked as a casual labourer in town from early morning until evening. Her husband also found work, but often there was nothing available: about twice a week they and their six children had nothing to eat. "Practically none of us gets any food here," a sheikh in Krinding told IRIN. Some managed to eke out a living doing odd jobs like digging latrines in the town or domestic labour, he said. But there are not enough odd jobs for 90,000 or so IDPs in and around Al-Junaynah town, most of whom were destitute, aid workers said. "The vast majority are dependent - they need the food," one aid worker said. In recent days, a number of demonstrations or low-level riots have been held at food-distribution or registration sites and outside agencies’ offices, in what one aid worker described as "a rent-a-mob". Aid workers have reportedly been threatened on several occasions with violence, which was then defused. Aid workers entering camps have sometimes found themselves surrounded by hundreds of people demanding to be registered and fed. On Wednesday, about 130 women and 15 men - at least some of whom were not IDPs - gathered outside one of the UN offices with a simple message: "This is the fourth time we have watched as other people received food and we got nothing. If you have nothing for us, let us go to Chad." [Chad has been hosting tens of thousands of refugees from Darfur.] "It’s a sense of frustration at the perceived lack of food or the inequality in the distribution of the food," commented one aid worker. TENS OF THOUSANDS NOT REGISTERED TO RECEIVE FOOD Telling the difference between Al-Junaynah’s IDPs and the town’s 100,000 residents is often impossible. Townspeople, who have exhausted their own food stocks while hosting tens of thousands of IDPs for months, are also hungry for free food. They mingle freely with IDPs in and around the camps. Many of them have set up tiny, makeshift shelters made of bramble and straw to loiter in on distribution days in the hope of striking it lucky. New IDP arrivals in the town in recent weeks, combined with the movement of IDPs and residents between camps means registering those "entitled" to food is no easy task. Some IDPs were registered in March and April. Efforts to re-register those in Al-Junaynah started on Wednesday, when Islamic Relief went to Al-Riyad camp in the early morning to distribute food tokens to each household. The task required a police presence to guard against a possible influx from outside the camp, the help of several different agencies, and total secrecy until the last minute to avert rioting. If all went well, these IDPs should receive food by between 15 July and 20 July, said one Islamic Relief worker. WFP registered about 40,000 people in the last week, Pierluigi Martinesi, the overall coordinator of emergency operations in Western Darfur told IRIN on Tuesday. By the end of the week, he said, a further 37,000 would be registered in accessible government-controlled areas, and they would all get their rations within a matter of days. Facts and figures in Darfur are highly imprecise - at best very rough estimates - but aid workers say there is a huge difference between the number of people registered by WFP to receive food in the three localities of Al-Junaynah, Habilah and Kulbus - currently 249,000 are receiving rations - and the actual number of IDPs. In Krinding camp over 14,000 people are registered to receive food, but humanitarian workers believed the total number of residents was actually 22,000. In Al-Riyad camp, just over 4,000 are registered against a total number of at least 15,000, according to the aid workers. The discrepancies mean that some of the IDPs have been watching their neighbours receive food over the last three months - distributions started in April - while they have been left with nothing. "Those with cards receive food. We have no cards. Our community leaders register us, but we get nothing," said Zaynab in al-Riyad camp. She and her seven children "frequently" had nothing to eat, she said. IDPs and town residents have often looted food inside the camps after distributions, an aid worker told IRIN. International aid workers associated with three different organisations told IRIN that upwards of 100,000 people in accessible government-controlled areas in al-Junaynah, Habilah and Kulbus, all in Western Darfur, had never been registered to receive food, or were only being registered now. Two sources told IRIN that an additional 100,000 people might well be in areas not yet accessed by aid workers. WFP says it is trying to improve its response capacity. "We’ve clearly said before that we don’t have the capacity to feed or help all the IDPs in Sudan," said Peter Smerdon, a WFP spokesman. "We are trying to build up our capacity. "We register them as we find them. As they are registered, they are incorporated into our ongoing distributions," he added. But due to shortages of staff and vehicles, delays were inevitable. MALNUTRITION FIGURES RISING Updated registration figures alone will still not solve Western Darfur’s food problems, say aid workers. Food rations being distributed by an implementing partner on behalf of WFP had been delivered three weeks late, an aid worker told IRIN. During a meeting of donors, UN agencies and NGOs, it emerged that by 5 July, only one-third of the food needed for June had been delivered by WFP to its main implementing partner in Al-Junaynah. As a result, Save the Children-US had only managed to distribute 38 percent of the necessary food for June. Compounding matters, the rations in Al-Junaynah town now contain 1,600 kcal whereas the normal amount is 2,100 kcal. "It is not even enough for half a month, said Nur, a pregnant woman in Ardamata camp. "And the last food came two months ago." The IDPs registered in Murnei had been receiving half-rations since February - about 1,000 kcal per day instead of 2,100 kcal - a Medecins Sans Frontieres worker told IRIN. "If they are only getting half-rations now, it is very difficult to be optimistic, and I think it will increase deaths during the rainy season," she said. According to MSF, global acute malnutrition rates around Al-Junaynah are running at about 25 percent while severe acute malnutrition was estimated at five percent. One aid worker described the IDPs as living "on a precipice". Children are weakening first, adults will be next, the aid worker said. "We don’t have enough food to give full rations, because the donor response has been slow," said Smerdon. He noted that the food-supply line was "very weak" because WFP had only received one-third of the funding needed for Darfur. Moreover, the average delay between a donor pledging food and its arrival in the country where it was required was four months, he said. WFP has been asking donors for cash contributions so that it can buy cereals in Sudan, which had had a bumper harvest, instead of importing them, he added. Also, a combination of insecurity, lack of Sudanese trucks to carry food, a lack of jet fuel in Sudan, and terrible roads meant that delays in transporting food were inevitable. As a result no food had been pre-positioned in Western Darfur. Instead, food was being distributed as soon as it arrived. WFP planned to introduce its own fleet of 200 long-haul trucks soon. Airdrops of food will also begin, especially to areas cut off by rains. "We are doing our best," Smerdon said. "But that’s probably not much consolation to people waiting for food."