World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

A woman was the first ex-combatant to be demobilized in this week's historic launch of a UN-backed program, according to a UN press release Thursday. Fatima, a former member of the People's Defense Forces, was first in line when 15 ex-combatants, including four other women, stepped forward on Wednesday in Ed Damazin in Blue Nile State at the start of the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) program. [...] During the ceremony, ex-combatants relinquished their weapons and in return received a DDR identification card, cash, non-food items and a coupon for food rations provided by the UN World Food Program.

More than a dozen soldiers, who fought in the long-running Sudanese civil war, today handed over their weapons at the start of a United Nations-backed demobilization programme aimed at coaxing 180,000 ex-combatants back into civilian life. [...] During the demobilization process in Ed Damazin, ex-combatants from the north and south symbolically relinquished their weapons and in return received a DDR identification card, cash, non-food items and a coupon for food rations provided by the World Food Programme (WFP).

Thousands of Congolese civilians have fled across the border to South Sudan to escape rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday. About 2,000 left northeastern Congo for the Sudanese village of Lasu last week alone, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said. Thousands more Congolese are already living in South Sudan, having fled their villages for fear of attacks by the rebels Uganda-based rebel group, Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva. The population in South Sudan is unable to support all the refugees, so the World Food Program plans to deliver emergency rations to the area, Redmond said.

With just 15 days left in office, President Bush announced Monday that he had ordered an immediate airlift to deliver vehicles and equipment to the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan to bolster a struggling international peacekeeping effort there.