New refugee arrivals straining existing resources

A team from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) arrived in a Chadian border town to verify reports of new refugees from Sudan's western region of Darfur arriving since the beginning of the month, the UNHCR said on Tuesday. Ron Redmond, a UNHCR spokesman in Geneva, said "local authorities estimate that each week some 200 to 300 people have been crossing the border from Darfur into Chad since the beginning of the month". The new refugees were joining some 7,000 refugees already registered in the Chadian border town of Bahai. Some of the newcomers told the UNHCR team that "they left their homes following attacks by militia on 2 April", who had looted and burned their houses, said Redmond. He said UNHCR and its partner CARE would on Wednesday distribute aid to refugees in the Kariari area, 35 km north of Bahai. Some 16,000 refugees who fled from Darfur in January and February after their villages had been bombed by aircraft and attacked by militias, are sheltering in the town. The main problem facing these two camps was that of water. The camps had reached their maximum capacity in terms of water resources, said Redmond, and UNHCR was searching for additional sources. He added that the refugees had been surviving on food they had brought with them from Darfur and had been helped by the local population who also shared their food with them. This generosity, however, had now reached its limits as Chadian families also had to think of their own survival. As a result, the "people have turned to eating mukhet, which are seeds normally used to feed cattle", Redmond said. According to a recent survey by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), refugees arriving at a mobile clinic IRC has in Kariari suffered mainly from diarrhoea, respiratory infections and conjunctivitis. IRC noted, however, that "nearly half of the mothers and children met on 21 April at the clinic were there not for consultations, but to ask for food". Redmond said the refugee situation in Kariari and Bahai, as well as in Tine, "underlines the urgency to open new camps as soon as possible to continue moving refugees away from the border". The Darfur conflict, which erupted early last year between the Sudanese government and militias allied to it on the one hand and two rebel groups on the other hand, has displaced some 1.1 million people, including some 110,000 who have fled to Chad.