UN News center: March 13th 2009
After ouster of aid groups from Darfur, UN focuses on minimizing immediate risks.
The United Nations system is focusing on the immediate risks posed to the 4.7 million people dependent on humanitarian aid in Sudan’s war-racked Darfur region after the ordered expulsion of 13 aid groups, a spokesperson for the Organization said today.
At the same time, UN officials continued to press for the reversal of the decision of the Sudanese Government on expelling the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which came immediately after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Al-Bashir last week for alleged crimes committed in the region.
Fighting between Government troops, their allied militias and rebels has led to the deaths of an estimated 300,000 people and displaced some three million more in Darfur since 2003.
The results of an ongoing joint UN-Sudanese mission to assess current needs will be made public next week after it competes its work on 18 March, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said that the planned distribution of two months rations to the 1.1 million people who had been served by the expelled by partner NGOs would begin in the coming days, probably Sunday or afterward.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which is concerned by the impact on the quality and the distribution of water, said it was working with the Government and its UN partners to meet immediate needs and to assure the most urgent needs could be met for up to three months.
An urgent priority of the World Health Organization (WHO) is containing the spread of a meningitis outbreak in the Kalma Camp in southern Darfur. Fifty-four cases, four of them fatal, have already been diagnosed.
Meningitis is very dangerous, especially in crowded areas, WHO pointed out, warning that if people are not immunized rapidly, the disease would spread.
The health agency said its work is made much more difficult because some of the expelled NGOs had been doing surveillance and detection of such outbreaks on a daily and weekly basis.
They are also on the frontline of the fight against malnutrition and water-borne and insect-borne diseases, and worked actively on reproductive health issues, WHO said.
(source: UN News center)