Janjaweed still attacking inside Chad - Libya opens route for UN aid to Darfur

A twelfth camp was opened on May 4, 2005 in eastern Chad by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) to decongest refugee camps nearby.

Talks lasted for several months before the Chad government and the 40 families living on the site agreed to allow the UNHCR to install the new camp.

Also involved in its management are non-governmental organisations Africare, Oxfam, which is in charge of water and sanitation, CORD, education and community services and MSF Holland, which is in charge of health.

According to IRIN May 4, the Janjaweed are still attacking inside Chad and aid workers in eastern Chad have reported a stream of incidences along the border in recent weeks.

Last month, Chadian authorities accused Khartoum of backing rebels opposed to Chad President Idriss Deby who operate near the border.

Health workers warned late last month that two out of the 11 refugee camps in arid eastern Chad are fast running out of water and no lasting solution has yet been found.

The most seriously affected camps are Am Nabak and Toulom, some of the northernmost camps that snake south along Sudan's 700 km border, according to UNHCR.

The Am Nabak site, which hosts 16,000 Sudanese refugees who spontaneously moved from the border, does not have its own water supply and was never suitable for the establishment of a camp, according to UNHCR.


Photo IRIN: 200,000 Sudanese refugees have fled across the border from Darfur into Chad.

Chadian government charges that the authorities in Khartoum have recently been helping Chadian rebels who are said to be gathering in Darfur, close to the Chadian border.

"We think it is inimical for a friendly country like Sudan, for which we have been making enormous sacrifices for several years, to nurture an armed rebellion on its territory not far from the border," the governor said.
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Update report May 11 via IRIN:

Aid agencies have withdrawn their staff from four refugee camps in eastern Chad following disturbances which led to the injury of seven aid workers in one particular incident, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Wednesday.

"UNHCR personnel and NGO staff withdrew from the camps of Iridimi, Touloum, Mile and Kounoungou on Tuesday 10 May," the UNHCR said in a statement released in Abeche, the main town in eastern Chad.

"At Iridimi, a group of demonstrators armed with sticks and stones injured five UNHCR workers and two representatives of an NGO," the statement said.

Ginette Le Breton, a spokeswoman for UNHCR in Chad's eastern town of Abeche, said around 40 workers were withdrawn.

"Today the situation is calm ... we are evaluating when services can be resumed in the camps," she told Reuters.
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Security benefit for use of fuel efficient stoves, in Darfur

Using the simplest of materials -- mud, clay, water, and donkey dung --more than 2,500 women in the Kebkabiya, North Darfur, Sudan, have learned how to build themselves a little bit of security. They are making stoves, write Coco McCabe of Oxfam, May 5, 2005.

For some of the women in Kebkabiya, a once-small town that is now bursting with more than 60,000 displaced people, the fuel-efficient stoves they are crafting have changed their lives. The stoves have allowed the women to cut by half or more, the amount of wood needed for cooking. So they need to make only half as many trips beyond the safety of the town's perimeter to gather wood - trips that put the women at constant risk of attack.


Oxfam Photo: Some of the women in the camp with their new fuel-efficient stoves. More than 2,500 women have learned how to build themselves a little bit of security.

The four-month project started by Relief International in mid-February and funded by Oxfam [see April 11, 2005 Proposal] provides participants with a one-week course in stove-construction and good cooking practices. The process takes three weeks: one for the class and two for stove-drying time.

Oxfam hopes to expand the stove-making programme to other regions of Darfur, thereby enabling more women to better protect themselves and improve the quality of their lives.

More than 2,500 in Kebkabiya have learned how to make fuel-efficient stoves. They dramatically reduce the amount of wood women must burn to cook their family meals.


Oxfam Photo: Women collecting their new stoves.

Now, in the displacement camps of Mornei, Darfur, Concern UK have already hosted two training sessions where the women learn how to construct and use the stoves. 50 women were involved in each session and each woman agreed that she would in turn pass the knowledge on to five other women.

The stoves are enclosed, meaning there is far less risk of fire spreading than with basic open fires which can be hazardous in crowded camp situations. The risk of small children falling into the fire is also removed by the fact that the stove is enclosed. Using less wood means the depletion of local fuel sources is slowed down and less smoke is omitted than with traditional fires.
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UN food agency opens new Libya route to deliver food aid to Darfur

Good news. Finally, the UN's WFP has begun airlifting food aid from a new route directly from Libya to reach Darfur. The aim is to move as much food aid as possible to nearly two million people during the rainy season, when access becomes extremely difficult.

Last November, a collaboration between the US and the Libyan governments allowed the transition of WFP food aid through Libya to reach Darfur refugees displaced by the fighting to camps in Chad.

The new air route will boost the overland transport route - opened last April - of food aid through Chad. This opening of the ancient caravan route through Chad has so far allowed the delivery of 400 metric tonnes of food aid. WFP is expecting to deliver some 50,000 metric tonnes of food aid through air, land and rail transport.

WFP has so far received US$286 million of the US$467 million it requires to feed an average of 2.3 million people each month in Darfur in 2005, leaving a 39 percent shortfall. (Cam/Aki)


Photo IRIN: 197,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to camps in eastern Chad

Health workers warned late last month that two out of the 11 refugee camps in arid eastern Chad are fast running out of water and no lasting solution has yet been found.

The most seriously affected camps are Am Nabak and Toulom, some of the northernmost camps that snake south along Sudan's 700 km border, according to UNHCR.

The Am Nabak site, which hosts 16,000 Sudanese refugees who spontaneously moved from the border, does not have its own water supply and was never suitable for the establishment of a camp, according to UNHCR.

Water has to be pumped out of wells in the town of Iriba and then trucked 40 kilometres through the desert to the camp.

At nearby Touloum refugee camp, water supplies are also dwindling.

There boreholes serving 20,000 refugees are not able to keep up with demand, and refugees have been receiving on average 9 to 12 litres of water per person per day, Garelli explained.

In the Am Nabak and Touloum sites, technicians are struggling to find alternative supplies.
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Seasonal rains likely to hamper relief operations

Already rains have begun in the southern most parts of Darfur," the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net) said in a report released on 5 May. It detailed how rainfall would affect relief efforts in the crisis-hit region of western Sudan.

"Northern areas, like El Fasher will start to experience heavy seasonal rains by the end of June," the report added. "By the end of July the rains will cover the entire region."

Tags: Darfur Sudan Africa