Aid worker warns over worsening crisis in Sudan

The crisis in the stricken west African region of Darfur, which has left over a million people homeless, will only get worse, an Irish aid worker warned today.

Muireann Kirrane, an emergency programme officer from Dublin working with Trócaire in the Sudan area, said the threat of disease was building in the refugee camps with the upcoming rainy season.

The 29-year-old aid worker said: “We are providing soap as disease is going to be rampant.

"Cholera, for example, is one of the easiest diseases to spread, with kids playing in filthy water and no toilets, respiratory diseases due to the rain, and diarrhoea, which causes one third of deaths in children under five in the camps.”

Irish people have donated €1m to Trócaire’s emergency appeal fund, which was started after aid workers were allowed in to examine the extent of the humanitarian disaster.

For the past 15 months, the Sudanese army and the government-backed Arab nomadic militias, known as the Janjaweed, have been burning farms and attacking towns in a violent campaign against civilians and rebel groups.

The Africans say the Khartoum-based government are turning a blind eye to the abusive behaviour against the population in Darfur, which has erupted into armed conflict after years of tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and African farmers.

The internal strife has left tens of thousands dead or mutilated and has sent over 100,000 people across the border into neighbouring Chad to seek refuge.

“Basically, we are working to address the immediate emergency needs of shelter by providing plastic sheeting, blankets, buckets to collect water and food,” Ms Kirrane said.

“People have lost absolutely everything they ever owned.”

Trócaire, which is a development agency run by the Catholic Church, has joined up with the agency Caritas Internationalis in the region to set up an emergency response programme to combat the spread of disease in the refugee camps.

Ms Kirrane said some of the larger camps have between 60,000 to 80,000 people living in them and have the potential to become disease-ravaged.

She said: “The conflict has been going on for 15-months and the Sudanese government have known for a good six-months that it was going to be as bad as it is if not worse.

“It is certainly the worst I have ever seen in Trócaire in my three years, and emergency officers tend to go to the worst regions.”

Ms Kirrane said the crisis also has the potential to develop due to the ‘scorched earth’ campaign, which has ruined the harvests.

“There is going to be no harvest in October as the people were burned off the land in April, so there won’t be a harvest in October, and the seeds left from October would have been planted for next year, so they are looking at a year or so of no access to food unless they are given provisions.”

She said the aid workers cannot get into significant areas in the region as they are too unsafe and they do not know the condition of the people there.

Ms Kirrane, who is flying back to the region tomorrow, said the people could not be supported with aid to go back to their villages unless there is security.

“During the last couple of days there has been a US resolution to declare genocide, so if the UN agrees then they have to do something. The UK are saying they might send in peacekeeping soldiers. The next couple of days or weeks are crucial,” she said.

Ms Kirrane said the African Union has 16 military teams of eight people monitoring and protecting the refugee camps.

Many of the displaced people have not reached the food handouts from the non-government organisations or their medical clinics and are living on the outskirts of villages relying on their generosity.

Trócaire is only one of Ireland’s aid groups working in the region. The group is working with four local partner groups, as part of an international team, which is budgeting a €20m emergency response plan.

“It will only get worse there is going to be a lot of deaths, unfortunately. This period is traditionally called the hungry season, when they are waiting for their harvest.

"But now they have had to share their resources with the people who have come to their villages.

"Each community ends up hosting people as poor as they are,” Ms Kirrane said.

Donations can be made to Trócaire’s emergency appeal by calling the freephone number 1850 408 408.