World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

After expelling aid organizations in March, the government of Sudan is letting some back in the country, the United Nations humanitarian chief said Thursday. (..) The World Food Programme said the hunger gap season runs from May to October, during harvest time. During the season, groups distribute food to more than 3 million people, the organization said.

The Sudanese government said it has covered successfully the gaps left by the forced departure of the international aid workers. US officials who visited the region say Sudan agreed to receive other international NGOs, but there are no visible changes on the ground. The UN World Food Programme intensified the direct distribution to the IDPs. UNICEF and WHO also are doing there best to prevent the deterioration of the health situation. The IDPs spokesperson said the security situation remains volatile and government militias continue to be located beside the displaced camps and in the villages deserted by the IDPs following the 2003-2004 attacks. He also dismissed government claims about the amelioration of the security situation and the voluntary return of the IDPs.

Armed raiders using mortars and heavy guns seized a Sudanese army base near the Chad border in Darfur on Sunday, the second to have fallen in just over a week, international peacekeepers said. (..) The U.N.'s World Food Programme said a contract driver was shot dead by suspected robbers in Al Deain in South Darfur on Tuesday.

The rainy season, Sudan's traditional "hunger season," is about to start, just nine weeks after the largest humanitarian relief operation in the world was crippled by expulsions of 13 leading international aid agencies. (..) The World Food Program (WPF) has just finished distributing emergency two-month food rations to nearly two million displaced people in refugee camps, while UN relief organizers are struggling to redeploy local health workers who worked for the expelled agencies. (..) The WFP said its work "is an ad hoc, rapid response with limited accountability and is therefore unsustainable." It does not have the staff and infrastructure to replace the expelled aid agencies.

Sudan's government says it will invite new aid groups to work in Darfur and allow those still operating there to expand their activities.
The UN's head of humanitarian affairs welcomed the move.

The humanitarian situation in Akobo County is very desperate and appalling. There are 25, 000 persons displaced from the 12 villages of Nyandit Payam and some from Wanding after the County authorities handed over Wanding area to the neighbouring County of Nasir which is part of upper Nile state. The displaced have no shelter, limited food intervention from WFP and still feeling unsafe. Their villages and grain stores have been torched to ashes. Some families have been totally wiped out. Many children have been left without families and traumatized.

Extreme weather conditions push people to the edge here. When it rains, all plains get flooded, roads get washed away and crops die. And when the sun is out, the heat is blistering and all crops dry up. Year in, year out, people don’t have food and depend on the rare food handouts, which local resident James Aswol is very sure do not reach their intended beneficiaries. James is a 29-year-old catechist but he looks 40. He is tall dark and skinny with traditional scars running across his forehead, like most Nuer man. He offered me his insights into south central Sudan’s problems. We visited the booming Leer village market together. “You see, this is where all relief food ends,” he said pointing at a container labelled "WFP cooking oil". “There are many traders here from Darfur who buy and take it away,” he said. "The food situation is very serious. Most people cannot afford two meals a day. They have to eat once and that is it."

Nearly two months after Sudan kicked out 13 foreign relief agencies, remaining aid workers are trying to stave off a humanitarian catastrophe in the Darfur region. “There is a potential for a crisis. We're working to make sure there's no major disaster,” said John Holmes, the UN's under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs. (…)The UN World Food Programme is still getting supplies out on an ad hoc basis, through local community leaders.

In January, Kumba launched an appeal for aid, with a response from humanitarian agencies which she has described as inadequate. "This is not enough any more," Kumba told IRIN. "They [the refugees and IDPs] don't have water. The sanitation is not good." An increase in the number of IDPs and refugees means a strain on the state's social services. "The World Food Programme is delivering food, but they move under fear of attack," Lexton Wani, an official of the Southern Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission based in Western Equatoria , told IRIN. "Sometimes, the food is delivered, but people don't know how to eat it; you're giving someone sorghum, but people don't have grinding mills."

Nearly two months after 13 major international aid agencies were expelled from Sudan, concerns rise that rebel groups are uniting in preparation for fresh attacks. (..) In some camps, residents have been refusing humanitarian aid, to protest the government's expulsion of the NGOs. Leaders of one of the most volatile camps in Darfur, Kalma, have recently begun re-accepting food distributions, after a three-week deadlock, but resistance remains. "They have made it clear that they do not want any national NGOs [in the camp], because they believe that these NGOs are run by the government and it's one way that the government wants to infiltrate the camp," says Eddie Rowe, head of the World Food Programme in southern Darfur.