Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 13th March. World Food Programme on Tuesday announced the operation and warned that lifesaving programmes in Chad will stop because of a funding crunch “in a matter of weeks”.
UN humanitarians are working around the clock to pre-position aid in Chad for Sudanese refugees fleeing the violence at home.
The agency said that thousands of Sudan refugees fleeing the country over the border into Chad to escape heavy fighting between warring generals that began last April.
WFP said that the aid they need must be delivered before seasonal rains flood roads serving camps for the displaced in the east, cutting off access.
The agency reported that most refugees cross the border into Sudan traumatized, hungry and with “horrific tales of violence”.
It noted that the new arrivals rely entirely on humanitarian assistance to survive and 4 in 10 Sudanese refugee children under five suffer from severe anaemia.
WFP Country Director in Chad, Pierre Honnorat said “The spillover from the crisis in Sudan is overwhelming an underfunded and overstretched humanitarian response in Chad. We need donors to prevent the situation from becoming an all-out catastrophe.
UN agency explained that a vital cross-border supply route into Sudan’s conflict-scarred Darfur region is also at risk.
This is the only “reliable” route into embattled western Sudan, said WFP.
It stressed that it had made it possible to help one million people in Darfur since last August.
“Cutting assistance to communities facing this level of vulnerability is unthinkable,” Mr. Honnorat said.
He warned that families had no option but to “skip meals and eat less nutrition food, laying the ground for crises of nutrition, crises of instability and crises of displacement”.
WFP urgently needs $242 million to provide support to crisis-affected people in Chad over the next 6 months.
Comments are closed.