The United Nations said on Wednesday it is still lacking two-thirds of the money it needs to meet emergency aid needs in Sudan for the rest of the year, particularly in the war-torn western Darfur region.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) said in a statement it needs $722-million to meet the most urgent aid needs in Sudan for the rest of 2004. Of that total, donors have only provided $288-million.
“The UN today warned that $434-million out of $722-million is still required to respond to Sudan’s most urgent humanitarian needs through the end of the year,” Ocha said in a statement from Geneva.
Ocha said it has increased by almost 50% its estimate of emergency aid needs in Darfur, where fighting pitting black African rebels against the Sudanese army and allied Arab militias has produced the world’s worst current humanitarian catastrophe.
An extra $115-million is needed for the western region of Sudan, mainly designed to fund air food drops by the UN’s World Food Programme.
“The overall funds required for the Darfur crisis have been revised to $365-million, up from $250-million requested in March,” the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, Manuel Aranda da Silva, said in the statement.
“Aid agencies averted an apocalyptic catastrophe by gaining access to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by war over the past couple of months but the humanitarian crisis is far from over,” Aranda da Silva warned.
“Hundreds of thousands of families displaced by terrorising militias are completely dependent on relief for survival. Many are still empty-handed and … we could see the amount of people needing help rise exponentially over the next weeks and months.”
He said families who were forced to flee their homes and abandon their fields have completely missed this year’s planting season.
Even if security were to be radically improved in the near future, Ocha expects to have to provide aid until at least late 2005.
Aranda da Silva said there are also “millions of vulnerable people struggling to survive” in other parts of the vast desert country.
Another $110-million is needed to provide aid to more than three million other people living under “extremely fragile conditions” in the south, centre and east of the country, he said.
Sudan plunged into civil war in 1983, when the mostly Christian and animist south rose up against the Muslim and Arabised north.
Together with famine and disease, the conflict has claimed at least 1,5-million people and displaced more than four million others.
The broader conflict, outside Darfur, has been the subject of long-running peace talks and is close to being resolved.
Earlier on Wednesday, the European Union announced it is allocating a further €20-million in aid to Darfur, which is currently the subject of government-rebel peace talks sponsored by the African Union. — Sapa-AFP
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