Disaster threatens in north and south

Three million people face disaster in Sudan unless food assistance reaches them, the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned. As war- and drought-induced hunger sweeps across the country, WFP will run out of food by mid-April unless immediate action is taken, WFP said on 29 March. More than 600,000 people are affected by drought in the north and south of the country, and another 2.4 million people are affected by the ongoing civil war. Disaster will strike unless the Sudanese government clearly asks for international assistance or itself outlines a “realistic plan of assistance”, Masood Hyder, WFP Country Director for Sudan, warned. He said that parts of Sudan were experiencing the driest season in living memory, even compared to 1984. “This year it is concentrated and harsher,” was his comment. Hyder said he had just returned from Northern Darfur and Kordofan states in western Sudan, where lack of water was a serious problem. A WFP team confirmed that the capital of Northern Darfur, Al-Fashir, had no water left in its reservoirs, and that the largest dam in the region, the Mellit Dam, “is bone dry”. Water has to be purchased at high prices. Pastoralists cannot sustain their livestock. “Distress sales have resulted in livestock prices plummeting to such an extent that very little grain can be purchased in return.” Mansoor warned that there would be a disaster in Sudan unless donors responded promptly on humanitarian grounds to the needs of the people . “There will be a disaster if the food does not arrive on time,” he said.