Reduced food rations in Darfur until October

Despite new pledges to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), it will take at least until October for full food rations to be restored to people who depend on such aid in Sudan’s troubled western region of Darfur, WFP said. The agency, which was forced to halve the caloric content of its rations to displaced people in Darfur in May because of funding shortfalls, said on Wednesday that proactive planning by the donor community would help to avoid such gaps in the food supply. "We are extremely grateful to those donors who stepped in at the last minute," WFP Executive Director James Morris told reporters in Khartoum on Wednesday after a five-day visit to the south, the east and Darfur. "But in Sudan, it takes up to six months for a confirmed contribution to materialise as food in the hands of people in Sudan. We know this, and we must all plan ahead for it to end these breaks in the supply." A series of new donations, including 20,000 metric tons of sorghum from the government of Sudan, would allow rations to be increased to 85 percent of the full amount from June to September in the Darfur states. "It is still not perfect, but it is considerably better than it was six weeks ago," Morris said. "My other consuming concern is the sheer magnitude of the money required to get us through the end of the year. We simply need commitments today for our work in 2007." Earlier on Tuesday, Morris opened a conference in Khartoum to chart a comprehensive strategy for food aid in Sudan until 2011. "It will not be, in my judgment, possible for the international community to support - sustain - something in the order of a billion dollars [a year] to do our work here," he warned. Sudan had to develop a strategy that would enable it, ultimately, to feed itself, he said. Sudan is WFP's largest operation in the world, accounting for one-third of the organisation's budget. In May, a critical shortage of funds forced the agency to take what Morris described as "one of the hardest decisions of my life" and reduce rations to half for two million people in Darfur and eastern Sudan.