International Red Cross says Darfur villagers facing famine by Imogen Foulkes, BBC News 6:23pm 19th Oct, 2004   Geneva. 18 October, 2004    Rural communities in the Darfur region of Sudan are facing an unprecedented food crisis, according to the international Red Cross. It says it is worse even than the African famines of the 1980s and 1990s.    A food-assessment survey in villages across Darfur in September found that most communities have planted, at best, only a third of the crops they need. Tens of thousands of people have died in the 18-month conflict between rebel groups and government-backed militia. More than a million people have been driven from their homes.    The conflict in Darfur has caused a collapse in agriculture, says the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Most villages have planted very little; farmers have had their seeds, their tools and their cattle looted. These are the people who did not flee to camps for displaced persons - they tried to stay at home. Now they face famine.    The ICRC found these communities spending all their money on food at the local market, where prices are now two to three times what they were last year. Those without money are resorting to collecting wild food - this exposes them to attack because, the Red Cross found, violence is still continuing.Soon remaining food supplies will run out. There is a risk of even more people fleeing because the camps have food and the villages do not.    The ICRC believes these communities could be facing an even worse hunger crisis than the famines of 20 years ago. Red Cross delegates will continue to provide food assistance to the villages and begin distributing seeds and tools for the next planting season. But, the organisation warns, this can only succeed if the violence comes to an end.    21.10.2004    UN says security worsening for Darfur aid workers. (ABC News Online)    The United Nations says that humanitarian efforts in Sudan's troubled Darfur region were being undercut by worsening security in the area.    "We're exceeding many of the goals we set ourselves two months ago. However the goalpost has been put miles ahead of us because so many more people have been affected," said Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator.    "We thought we would need to feed a million people by now - we have to feed two million," he told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.    An estimated 70,000 people have died and around 1.4 million have been displaced in Darfur after what UN officials have called a scorched-earth campaign of ethnic cleansing against the region's black African population.    The UN Security Council and secretary-general Kofi Annan have been pressing the Arab-led Khartoum government to disarm the Arab militias behind the bloodshed and to make it easier for humanitarian workers to reach the region's needy. But Mr Egeland said security for aid workers in the area was now worse than earlier in the year, when the Darfur crisis first came into the international spotlight.    "We feel very alone in Darfur at the moment," Mr Egeland said. "The security situation is deteriorating for us. Colleagues have been killed, colleagues have been harassed, colleagues have been kidnapped." He stressed the importance of quickly deploying the promised troops and monitors from the African Union, who have been held up by a lack of funding from international donors.    Earlier on Thursday, the African Union (AU) announced it would multiply its truce force in Darfur sevenfold, an announcement welcomed by UN chief Annan. "This AU mission is crucial to enhancing security for the civilian population and for the effective provision of much-needed humanitarian assistance," Annan's spokesman said in a statement. "In the light of the growing insecurity in Darfur, the secretary general urges the AU to deploy this force speedily," the statement said. Visit the related web page
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