Demolitions render thousands of IDPs homeless

As the international community discusses ways to tackle Sudan's Darfur crisis and journalists flock to the war-torn region, another disaster has been silently unfolding just a stone's throw from the capital, Khartoum, in El Salaam [‘Peace’ in Arabic] camp. Despite its name, there is nothing peaceful about El Salaam. The 120,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who live there have nicknamed the camp "Jaborona", which roughly means 'to force someone to do something against his will'. Over the past year and a half, the government of Sudan has bulldozed all structures there - homes, schools, clinics, latrines - leaving a muddy trail of disease and misery in its wake. Sudanese officials say the demolitions are part of a larger area-replanning programme that is meant to provide plots for residents and bring them vital services such as electricity and water. However, the plots are too expensive for most to buy and there are no signs of forthcoming services. A narrow bridge across the White Nile leads to Omdurman, whose religious ruler, the Mahdi, was toppled by the Anglo-Egyptian army of Lord Kitchener in 1898. In 1992, El Salaam camp was founded down the road from the Mahdi's tomb, where visiting foreigners flock on Friday afternoons to watch whirling dervishes dance. Most of the camp's inhabitants are people displaced from their homes in war-ravaged south Sudan. Neighbouring Wad Bashir camp hosts another 74,000 people. The government has destroyed thousands of homes in both camps since mid-2003, leaving gaping, putrid holes where latrines once stood and forcing residents to erect feeble makeshift dwellings that provide little shelter. "We are here in a shanty town now, my dear sister, we can't even say we're in a camp," Paula, a 38-year-old resident of El Salaam who works as a nutritionist for the Sudanese NGO Sub-Saharan International Development Organization (SIDO), told IRIN. "This is not a place for human beings, maybe for goats and rats," she said. Paula left her home after the war between the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) rebel group and the government reached her town, Torit, where she was working with the international NGO Norwegian Church Aid. She fled to Juba, the largest town in the south, in the late 1990s and soon after managed to find her way to Khartoum. She went to live in El Salaam in 1999. Paula said she was informed on 6 October that her house was to be demolished nine days later and that she could apply for a plot on which to build a new home. But even though she is one of the few camp residents with a regular salary, she cannot afford to buy one, let alone build a new home on it. In addition to the two camps in Omdurman, demolitions are ongoing in Mayo IDP camp in Khartoum, where some 2,000 to 2,400 homes have been flattened. Demolitions in teeming squatter camps throughout Khartoum have been occurring as well. There are nearly 900,000 IDPs in four official camps in Omdurman and Khartoum and in another 15 squatter camps. The NGO Refugees International estimates that some two million displaced southerners live in the north. Those who do not live in the camps have blended into the neighbourhoods of Khartoum. In El Salaam, 25,000 households have applied for the new government-allocated plots that will replace the area cleared by the demolitions. An estimated 17,000 families 'qualified' and were granted the right to own a plot. Some 11,000 families could afford to pay the 11,400 Sudanese dinars (roughly US $45) for the plots and had the necessary documents, such as a birth certificate, to make the purchase. Of those, 6,000 families cannot afford to build new homes. In the end, the vast majority of residents have been left homeless.

A Darfur IDP with her child sick with diarrhea in El Salaam Camp.

While providing a tour of her demolished neighbourhood, Paula points to piles of dirt that once formed her home and the local school, explaining that she had noticed a sharp increase in diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria, which she blames on the fetid pools that have served as crude toilets since the latrines were bulldozed. Paula noticed a young woman cradling in her arms an emaciated baby who was suffering from diarrhoea. She was from West Darfur, she said. "Luckily there hasn't been any serious mortality yet," Gizenga Willow, of the Sudanese NGO Fellowship and African Relief (FAR) told IRIN, "but disease is certainly on the increase, particularly public health-related disease. Families have no homes and are getting infections, particularly children. "These families need [services] made available to them so they can stay here because we're not sure about the peace yet," added Gizenga, whose NGO works in the camp. The international community predicts that many displaced people may return to their homelands once the rainy season is over, especially if a final north-south peace agreement is signed at talks between SPLM/A leader John Garang and Sudanese Vice President Ali Uthman Muhammad Taha, which resumed last week in Nairobi, Kenya. In anticipation of a successful resolution, tens of thousands have already braved the treacherous route - much of it mined - back to the south. Some aid workers suspect that many made this journey prematurely, forced onto the road by the demolitions. Recent joint agency rapid needs assessments have found that IDPs have been victims of harassment, taxation, severe hunger, banditry and sexual abuse while returning home. The United Nations humanitarian operation assisting returnees is operating on only 20 percent of the funding needed through to the end of the year, with a shortfall of a massive $123 million. Theresa, another El Salaam resident, told IRIN that like Paula, she would like to go to her family's home in the south - if only she had the resources to make the journey. Hiding from the scorching afternoon sun under a makeshift, open shelter, she thinks of nothing but going to Malakal. Although she only knows about her ancestral land through stories recounted by her now-deceased mother, she dreams of leaving El Salaam. The fact that she will most likely have nothing to return to in the south did not seem to bother her. Anything was better than her current situation. "The stories my mother told described a beautiful place," said Theresa. "At least [in Malakal] there will be food, we can eat fish from the Nile River. Our homes are destroyed here and we have nothing left."