The UN reported last week that six aid groups have suspended operations in eastern Chad. Nearly 300,000 Darfuri refugees have fled across the the Sudan-Chad border to escape violence in Darfur. Among the groups suspending operations are the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which reported the kidnapping of a French ICRC worker and five Chadian colleagues near the Sudanese border this week, and French NGO Solidarités, which lost a Chadian employee earlier this month.
As reported by PHR investigators in Nowhere to Turn: Failure to Protect, Support, and Assure Justice for Darfuri Women, Darfuri refugees in the Farchana Camp in eastern Chad are entirely reliant on the aid provided by UN and humanitarian agencies and face daily threats to their health and security. A September report from Amnesty International supported PHR’s findings at Camp Farchana and further spoke to the volatile security situation in eastern Chad, where more than 50 armed attacks on humanitarian workers have taken place during 2009. Armed banditry has been a persistent security threat, and is cited as the biggest danger facing Darfuri women and girls when they leave UNHCR camps to collect water and firewood.
PHR and other groups have long called for the implementation of firewood patrols around UNHCR camps in eastern Chad, where women and girls have to travel up to 30 kilometers away from camp to collect firewood for cooking, water to supplement the inadequate rations available in the camps and hay or straw to feed animals they raise for milk and meat. Forced to leave the camp in order to satisfy basic human needs of themselves and of their family members, Darfuri refugees plead with peacekeepers assigned to their protection, with little effect. The MINURCAT peacekeeping force and Détachement intégré de Sécurité (DIS) police units fail to provide for the security needs of the refugees; as reported in the September Amnesty International report, refugees report rebukes by DIS, telling refugees to take up their issues with camp administrators.
It is clear from events in recent weeks that the security situation in eastern Chad is insufficient for humanitarian access: aid agencies providing life-saving assistance to Darfuri refugees must be assured security for their convoys and for their international and Chadian employees. The UN should immediately review MINURCAT operationality and renew calls to donor governments to ensure full deployment of MINURCAT uniformed personnel to protect Darfuri refugees and humanitarians in Chad, along with all necessary military and other material, including military helicopters.
PHR continues to encourage all troop contributing countries and police contributing countries to recruit female officers for protection units trained to address sexual and gender-based violence and to increase funding of humanitarian operations in Chad and Sudan, to ensure the provision of healthcare services to survivors of gender-based violence.
Posted in: aid agencies, Amnesty International, chad, Conflict, Darfur, detachement integre de securite, dis, firewood, Health Rights Advocate, icrc, international committee of the red cross, minurcat, nowhere to turn, refugee camps, sexual and gender based violence, sudan, unhcr, united nations, Women
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The World Health Organization’s representative to Sudan, Mohammad Abdur Rab, told reporters yesterday that 10 percent of children in Darfur and in South Sudan die before their first birthday, and that 15 percent of children in western Darfur were malnourished. This immense figure provides a quantitative background to PHR’s work on food security issues, as well as sanitation and health needs of displaced Darfuris living in UNHCR camps for the past five years.
In meetings held with members of Congress in Washington, DC last week, PHR doctors briefed co-Chairs from the House Commission on Human Rights, Congressional Women’s Caucus and Congressional Caucus on Sudan on the urgent health, food and security needs in Camp Farchana. The camp was the site of PHR’s 2008 investigation into the impact of sexual violence on survivors of the Darfur conflict (see the report here), which found high levels of malnourishment, lack of healthcare, insufficient sanitation and lack of protection for women and girls in the face of daily risk of attack.
The food security issues and the health needs are closely linked — and an integrated strategy between UN agencies and aid organizations on the ground is desperately needed — on both sides of the Sudan/Chad border. Although the World Food Program (WFP) target caloric intake of 2,100 kilocalories is formally being provided to the refugees by WFP rations, the type and quantities of food apparently are seriously inadequate.
WFP rations consist of only five items (sorghum, oil, salt, sugar, corn-soy blend) and the sorghum rations are distributed in an un-ground form, which means that the refugees themselves have to pay the cost of grinding the grain.
The lack of milk, meat or vegetables has consequences for the health needs of refugees, particularly vulnerable groups like children and pregnant women. Even where fortunate refugees receive the target caloric intake, they don’t receive sufficient nutrients because of the limited diet.
We must commit to reducing child malnutrition by providing milk and meat to pregnant women and children. PHR has been working to encouraging UN agencies to coordinate sufficiently so that refugees themselves can be involved in the solution to this issue.
Currently, women are forced to sell their meager sorghum rations for milk or meat, travelling to a local market where they receive a vastly reduced price for their sorghum due to market saturation. However, if UN peacekeepers would provide protection for women and girls outside the camps, they could collect the necessary hay and water and raise livestock around the camp. This would give them a supply of milk and meat to add to their diet, and also provide them with the opportunity to provide for their family’s livelihood.
In his briefing yesterday, Abdur Rab also mentioned that international donors need to increase their support for fragile health services in Sudan, with special attention to secondary and tertiary care centres. Next week PHR will be doing more work on the issue of Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGV) programming, and the need to provide emergency assistance for injuries, documentation of injuries, access to HIV/AIDS prophylactic treatment, pregnancy testing, psychological and social support — none of which are currently being provided to women and girls in Darfur.
Posted in: camp farchana, chad, Conflict, Darfur, food security, gender-based violence, Health Rights Advocate, mohammad abdur, sexual violence, sudan, UN, unhcr, united nations, us congresss, wfp, WHO, Women, world food program, world health organization
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