UN launches appeal for 1.7m hungry Sudanese
NAIROBI: The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) appealed on Friday for $58
million to feed 1.7 million hungry Sudanese until the end of the year.
Most of the needy are in the south, a region devastated by civil war where
famine killed at least 60,000 people in 1998, the agency said.
"Hundreds of thousands of southern Sudanese are still at risk of hunger and
malnutrition," WFP's Sudan country director Mohamed Saleheen said in a
statement.
"The families that survived the famine are amongst the poorest in the
population. For them, the fine line between survival and recovery remains a
fragile one," he said.
Even in areas where rainfall has been ideal for cultivation, insecurity has
driven people from their homes and fields, while floods have been a problem
in other areas, WFP said.
Where food needs are greatest, a combination of fighting and bans on
humanitarian flights by the government has sometimes prevented the WFP from
feeding the needy, the agency said.
Rebels from the mainly Christian and animist south of Sudan have been
fighting the Islamist government for greater autonomy for 17 years. The
picture is complicated by widespread and unpredictable inter-factional
fighting.
In northern Bahr el Ghazal, the region worst hit by famine in 1998, militia
raids and flooding mean hundreds of thousands of families will be dependent
on food aid this year.
Fighting in the oil-rich region of Western Upper Nile ensured that 30 to 40
percent of the population had no harvest at all at the end of 1999.
"While conflict continues, a return to famine remains an ever present
spectre," said Saleheen. (Reuters)
For reprint rights: Times Syndication Service
|Disclaimer|
For comments and feedback send Email
© Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. 2000.