IDPs not safe from violence, aid workers say

Displaced people in the strife-torn western region of Darfur continue to be threatened and harassed even after their arrival in camps, aid workers say.

"The security situation in Abu Shouk [the second largest camp in Darfur] is deteriorating each day," says a local aid worker.

"IDPs [internally displaced persons] were reporting continuous military presence inside the camps during the nights with threats, detentions, harassment to the civil population and shootings."

Attacks in all three areas of Darfur have been recently reported - in West Darfur on Wednesday, an unknown number of gunmen opened fire on an IDP shelter, killing one man and seriously wounding his wife.

Last month, 13 militiamen entered a camp in North Darfur and fired on civilians, killing two children, aged six and nine, and injuring a teenager and an adult male.

In South Darfur state, humanitarian workers say that armed men attack IDP camps. IDPs say women are raped and belongings looted.

Violence, however, is just one side of the coin. Many IDPs suffer more subtle forms of harassment and abuse that make daily life in the camps a constant misery.

During the Eid holiday at the end of Ramadan in November, for example, trucks delivering food to ZamZam camp outside El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, were denied access by a military checkpoint. Although food deliveries resumed later on, deliveries of sugar were not allowed.

As a result, sugar prices in the ZamZam market - where IDPs can buy or exchange products to complement their food rations - skyrocketed during Eid, when people traditionally prepare a lot of sweets.

"It may sound a bit silly, but it is not when you realise the meaning that this has for the IDPs," the aid worker says. "They are very aware of the intentions behind it."

Other measures include restricting access to health facilities and latrines, and the recent establishment of a new military post at Al-Salaam camp near El Fasher, where IDP women are charged money for collecting firewood.

Another aid worker says that in November, some IDPs from Abu Shouk were forced by the Sudanese army to urinate in their shoes. They kept their urine-filled shoes in a plastic bag as evidence for aid workers the following day.

"At the end of the day I do not have the time or the capacity or the energy to write about what I see each day. I am afraid that all those stories will just evaporate," the aid worker said.

After efforts by humanitarian agencies, the African Union and Sudanese authorities, the governor of South Darfur recently agreed to reopen the road to Kalma camp on 15 December, lifting a six month-long blockade that had stopped the flow of commercial goods into the camp.

The United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has asked the African Union, which has 6,000-strong peacekeeping force in Darfur, to conduct 24-hour patrols in IDP areas.

"The humanitarian community is assisting the IDP and resident populations, and this has had a positive effect on the health and nutritional situation - but it is not a sustainable solution," says Dawn Elizabeth Blalock, advocacy and public information officer for OCHA in Khartoum.