Sudan food aid cannot reach 250,000

NEARLY a quarter of a million people in Sudan’s Darfur region cannot access UN food rations due to fighting, the World Food Programme said yesterday.

The United Nations food agency, which aims to reach three million people in the violent region each month, delivered food to about 2.8 million people in September, a spokeswoman said.

This meant that about 224,000 people in Darfur, most of them in the north of the region, remained cut-off from WFP rations, although this was an improvement over past months, WFP spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said.

“Nearly a quarter of a million are cut off. It is an improvement, but the situation remains dramatic,” she said.

The WFP gave double rations to those it reached in north Darfur in September as it was not sure it could reach them over the next months due to fighting.

The situation was particularly critical as this is the period which WFP calls the “hunger season”, just ahead of the harvests when people’s food supplies are virtually exhausted. Harvesting is also a security risk.

Khartoum has rejected a Security Council resolution authorising a UN takeover of the cash-strapped African Union mission in Darfur, where experts say 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced to flee their homes since 2003.

Under a proposal which looks to be a short-term fix for the deadlock, about 200 UN military and civilian staff will deploy in Darfur to support the AU peace monitoring mission.