Funding shortfall threatens Sudan aid operations

The UN has today appealed for desperately needed funds to fill a huge shortfall in aid for Sudan, which has seen mass displacement in the crisis-hit Darfur region, and a flood of refugees returning to its war-ravaged south.

Declaring that all of these aid operations "remain grossly under-funded," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) pointed out that even as the recent conflict in Darfur dominates the headlines, only about 40% of the requested $722 million has been received – with $434 million still outstanding to meet Sudan's overall needs till this year's end.

In the south, where prospects of a peace agreement in the 20-year war between the government and rebels has sparked the spontaneous return of an estimated 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), a mere $17 million of the $153 million required for the resettlement has so far been received.

Strained populations in the south are now forced to share scarce resources with returnees, and aid agencies predict that once the rainy season ends next month tens of thousands more people may return, leading to a potential humanitarian emergency. Just this month, an interagency assessment team confirmed that more than 50 returnees died from starvation.

A further $110 million is still needed to assist more than three million people living under extremely fragile conditions in southern, central and eastern regions where poor maize harvests have compounded the situation, the UN said.

"While the number of people in critical need of humanitarian assistance has skyrocketed in Darfur in recent months, I implore the international community to also remember the plight of millions of vulnerable people struggling to survive all over the country," the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan Manuel Aranda Da Silva said.

In Darfur, $188 million is still needed to meet the needs of some 1.5 million people who fled their homes after Arab militias launched a scorched-earth campaign of violence and intimidation against a mainly Muslim African civilian population perceived to be rebel sympathizers, according to OCHA. The UN predicts two million people could need humanitarian aid by October.

(gmcg)