Alarming levels of malnutrition in Darfur

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has found "alarming nutritional needs" in war-torn Darfur, western Sudan. Over the last two days, while vaccinating 4,900 children in the town of Garsila, Western Darfur, MSF staff identified 111 severely malnourished children and 387 moderately malnourished children. "MSF is extremely concerned about the food security of the population of Darfur, and fears that continued violence and insecurity, coupled with an insufficient international response, means that the situation can only deteriorate," said a statement. Garsila is one of numerous towns in Darfur that has been overwhelmed by influxes of people fleeing for their lives from militia and army attacks, as they are pushed off their farmland into local towns. Usually home to 4,500 people, Garsila hosts an extra 18,000. Similarly, Dulayq, home to 5,000, currently has a population of 22,000, while Umm Khayr is trying to cope with an extra 13,000 on top of its regular 5,000. "This is a pattern that is repeated in all the areas MSF has been able to assess," MSF reported. The displaced in all of the locations are gathered in various sites around the towns, including schools, offices, out in the open, or living with local families. Host communities are giving them food, "but as is to be expected when a population swells to more than four times its original size, resources and coping mechanisms are becoming increasingly strained," said MSF. On the other side of the border in neighbouring Chad, where over 110,000 refugees have fled, local populations are also coming under increasing pressure. For months, the local Zaghawah community, the same ethnic group as many of the Darfur refugees, shouldered the refugee burden by feeding and sheltering people in the absence of the international community. The advocacy group Refugees International (RI) is now warning that regular conflict between various groups along the border is being exacerbated by the influx of tens of thousands of people, all of whom are competing for scarce water, pasture and firewood. Farchana camp set up by the UN refugee agency and home to 2,000 refugees was close to a village of no more than 800 people, RI reported. The local hills were already being stripped of trees for firewood, it said. Food insecurity for local communities is also a potential problem. The last millet harvest - the local staple - in eastern Chad in November and December 2003 had been excellent, but the same may not be true this year, and communities may need emergency help to survive, said RI. Water is also extremely scarce, but local Chadians are wary of assistance from outside. One Chadian village had turned down an offer from an NGO to dig a well for them in case it attracted nomads - the Janjawid militias in Darfur belong to nomadic tribes - whose flocks would trample their crops, RI reported. Cross-border conflict is frequent in the region, with frequent attacks by Sudanese government-aligned militias. On 27 February, seven people were reportedly killed in a Janjawid cattle-rustling raid. Meanwhile, the cattle belonging to the refugees, who are themselves often semi-nomadic, were helping to deplete nearby grazing lands, and Chadian officials were concerned about unvaccinated cattle coming from Darfur which could cause disease problems, RI reported. Cattle are a major export of Chad and disease could damage the exports of this extremely poor and undeveloped country.