International Aid Convoy Arrives in Darfur as Humanitarian Crisis Worsens
(AWP) - International humanitarian organizations sent an urgent convoy of relief aid to the Darfur region in western Sudan, where humanitarian conditions are deteriorating due to ongoing fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since mid-April.
The convoy carried about 800 tons of medicine and agricultural inputs from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) to be distributed to the five states of Darfur.
Ibrahim Hasab al-Daim, Secretary-General of the Government of North Darfur State, said in statements to the Arab World Press (AWP) that the convoy arrived just in time and should help resume work at the state’s hospitals that were on the verge of being closed.
The states of Darfur are going through harsh humanitarian conditions due to the acute shortage of food after the strategic food reserves of the government and active organizations operating in the area have been depleted, as previously stated by Nimr Abdul-Rahman, the North Darfur governor, last month.
Security conditions hampered the arrival of the aid convoys except for some trucks after being secured by military forces belonging to the armed movements that signed the Juba Peace Agreement.
The shortage of food has caused the deterioration in living conditions of thousands of internally-displaced persons who are living in makeshift camps within the city of El-Fasher while the newly displaced people from the areas of Tawila and Kutum were sent to the Abu-Shouk camp, which also houses the IDPs of the armed conflict in Darfur.
A number of displaced women spoke of their inability to get food and shelter amid dwindling relief aid.
Aisha Jibril, complained of the small amounts of food provided, saying, “One stew pot is made to feed three-thousand people.”
Khadija Mostafa, another displaced woman, who was sitting under a tree breast-feeding her baby, said she was hungry and thirsty.
“I was displaced a long time ago. I haven’t got a blanket, a tent or anything. We were seven people inside one tent.”