In Chad, as in Sudan, tragic stories and soaring needs

Article at World Food Programme
By Elizabeth Bryant
Dated 24 July 2023 - here is a copy in full:

In Chad, as in Sudan, tragic stories and soaring needs

‘This is the price innocent people pay for war’ – WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain urges the international community to step up to help the ‘injured and malnourished

Sudanese refugee Hiba from West Darfur, Chad, survived hunger and deadly violence that has swept her homeland. 

Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

They arrive in Chad by the thousands, the vast majority women and children crossing a desolate wind-swept border from Sudan. Some come on rickety carts and vehicles piled high with hastily gathered belongings; others by foot, with just the clothes on their backs. 

Many also bring with them horrific tales of killings and other abuses by assailants they cannot forget.  

“They took everything,” said 23-year-old Hiba from Sudan’s West Darfur region  (her real name has been withheld for her protection). “Money, food, clothes. They even killed relatives, friends.”

Three months of ferocious fighting in Sudan has displaced more than 3 million people, killed and injured thousands of others and fed already alarming hunger numbers, including in neighboring countries. Of those fleeing Sudan, an estimated 330,000 refugees and returning nationals have poured into Chad alone, swelling a refugee population that is already the largest in West and Central Africa. 

“The people I spoke with on the Chad-Sudan border told me absolutely heartbreaking stories of their dangerous journey, and of loved ones they lost along the way,” said WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain, during a visit to Chad last week with United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed.

WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain during a visit to Adre, Chad. 

Photo: WFP/Julian Civiero

“Too many are injured and malnourished,” she added. “This is the price innocent people pay for war – what these people have been through is unacceptable, and the world must step up and help them.”

WFP is rapidly scaling up food and nutrition support, reaching roughly 164,000 new arrivals from Sudan to date, with plans to expand further to reach up to two million people countrywide in the coming months.

In Sudan, WFP has delivered food and nutrition assistance to more than 1.4 million people, despite daunting challenges. But continued fighting and access restrictions by warring parties make it extremely difficult for us to reach the millions more caught up in the conflict. That’s especially the case in West Darfur, where there are alarming reports of atrocities against civilians. 

Women who have fled Sudan's conflict receive WFP food assistance in Zabout Refugee camp in Chad. Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

With fears that Sudan’s conflict could escalate further, potentially destabilizing the broader region, support for WFP food assistance in places like Chad – which can help maintain peace and stability – is more important than ever. 

“The global community faces a decision point,” said McCain. “We either act now and stop Chad from becoming another victim of this crisis that has gripped the region, or wait and act when it’s too late.”

Today, the mounting needs far outpace our available resources. In Chad, WFP plans to reach 2 million refugees and vulnerable Chadians with emergency assistance. But we cannot even assist half of them due to insufficient funds.

“In all my years with WFP I’ve never seen crises at this level with such little financing," said WFP's country director for Chad, Pierre Honnorat.

Thousands of conflict-displaced people have ended up in displacement camps in Adre, Chad. Photo: WFP/Julian Civiero

Some of the new arrivals are severely injured, some children so malnourished it is too late to save them. 

Meanwhile, seasonal rains in Chad risk cutting off key supply routes for food and other life-saving humanitarian supplies.

“It's no longer about giving them hope or safety,” Honnorat said. “They need to eat every day. The situation is really critical.”

Even before Sudan's conflict broke out, Chad faced soaring hunger. Today, a projected 1.9 million people countrywide are struggling with severe food insecurity during the June-August lean season between harvests. Around 1.3 million children are acutely malnourished, with some of the highest rates in refugee communities. 

Many of Sudan’s newly displaced have ended up, for now, in camps around the eastern Chadian border town of Adre.

Many of those crossing into Chad have been wounded in Sudan's conflict and some children are severely malnourished. 

Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

Children chase each other around the newly erected stick-and-tarp shelters that dot a desert landscape recently greened by rains. Women in colorful robes wait patiently for WFP food distributions.

Inside her tent, Hiba cradles an infant daughter as she recalls her family’s flight to safety from West Darfur’s capital of El Geneina, where some of the worst violence has occurred. 

“They did such horrible things,” she said of the attackers, adding, “the most important thing is health and security – and even more important is food.” 

“We can see that they have suffered, many lost family members,” said WFP’s  Honnorat of the new arrivals, roughly 90 percent of whom are women and children. 

“You don't even dare ask that, 'Where are the men?'” he adds.  “You know the answer from others – that often they were killed.”

Abuobida, whose last name has also been withheld for his protection, counts among those men who made it out of Sudan alive. Like Hiba, he is also from El Geneina. He too lost friends and family in the fighting.

“They came to kill people, so they were on the road with motorbikes, with guns and with cars,” he recalls. “They entered houses and they took people’s things.”

During his journey to safety, he saw dead bodies along the roads. Abuobida arrived in Adre last month, alone and destitute. His family later joined him. 

He points to a small sack of sorghum and a pile of clothes inside the family’s tarp tent. “We don’t have anything else,” he said.

’They came to kill people,’  says Sudan refugee Abuobida of assailants in his home region of West Darfur. Photo: WFP/Marie-Helena Laurent

Many of those arriving have serious injuries. Children especially are malnourished. The most severe cases are hospitalized, with WFP providing temporary units for a makeshift hospital and medical logistics. But for some of the sickest, it’s too late. 

“Every week, children are dying,” said WFP’s Honnorat, stressing the importance of early malnutrition prevention and treatment.  

As Sudan’s conflict enters its fourth month, there is no reprieve either for Chad. 

“It’s a serious crisis,” Honnorat added, “and the problem is many more people are coming.” 

WFP urgently requires US$157 million to assist some 2 million people in greatest need in Chad and to stabilize a deteriorating situation. 

Learn more about WFP's work in Chad and Sudan click here to DONATE

View original: https://www.wfp.org/stories/chad-sudan-tragic-stories-and-soaring-needs

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Sudan: How a tea-seller in Khartoum displaced by conflict led her family away from hunger

Article from World Food Programme (WFP) website
By 2 Mohamed Elamin 
Dated August 2023 - here is a copy in full:

Sudan: How a tea-seller displaced by conflict led her family away from hunger

Support from World Food Programme and its partners is providing families nutrition and security as they plan their next steps

Displaced people receive assistance from WFP and partners at a defunct farm in Wad Medani in Gezira state, Sudan. Photo: OCHA/Ala Kheir

“We fled into the unknown with no destination in mind,” says Awadeya Mahmoud, describing the night in April when the sound of an explosion woke up her family of ten. By dawn, they and the people living near them in their south-Khartoum neighbourhood decided enough was enough, and fled the capital.

A worsening security situation is making it increasingly difficult for the World Food Programme (WFP) to reach the 6.3 million people it intends to this year. Since conflict broke out in the country on 15 April, it has reached 1.5 million with critical supplies, including 40,000 children aged under-5, pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Two days after the bombing, Mahmoud and her children made it to Albageir village in Gezira state.

“The war displaced my whole family and my children never healed from the horror they felt,” she recalls. “They refused to eat or drink. They were just crying.”

Mahmoud recalls her last night in Khartoum and her escape to Madani. Photo: WFP/ Moe Salah

At the time, the family were out of money and had to sell what belongings they could to finance their journey to safety. “I fled my home together with my neighbours to arrive in Albageir [village] before reaching Wad Madani,” says Mahmoud, who leads a cooperative of women caterers, including tea vendors like herself.

“I had to sell [many of] my belongings to be able to take my family to safety,” she says.

Continued fighting in Sudan poses a threat to the current planting season and to farmers who are already struggling to cope with soaring prices of fertilizers and seeds.

When Mahmoud and her neighbours arrived in Madani, 186km from home, finding a place to sleep was extremely difficult. The city was already filled with displaced people from the capital, Khartoum. Luckily, the families she had arrived with found a house to cram into with a total of 37 children. 

People receive rations of flour, vegetable oil, salt, and yellow split beans. Photo: OCHA/Ala Kheir

With basic shelter in place, the problem of hunger persists. A third of Sudan’s population was already food-insecure before the war, according to WFP.

“We seriously suffered, we had a food problem and some of the children suffered from fevers and measles,” says Mahmoud.

She is among 24,606 people that WFP has assisted in Madani through its new hub in the city. 

Using food from WFP, Mahmoud put her skills to work and started cooking for fellow displaced people.

“We are on full stomachs now,” she says of the families who escaped with hers. “I was given flour, oil, and yellow split beans.

People make do in a window-less dilapidated structure on the farm. Photo: OCHA/Ala Kheir

Gezira is among 14 of the 18 states where WFP has assisted people in the past few months, alongside, for the first time, the River Nile and White Nile states. 

While many people have made it safely out of Khartoum, thousands of families remain trapped in conflict areas with no access to food and other basic needs. “My cooperative alone has 150,000 members and I am hoping that WFP will be able to help them,” says Mahmoud.

“What WFP is doing is not easy. It's what we need the most in Sudan because you’re mobilizing food around the world for people,” says Mahmoud.  

“Humanitarian needs have reached record levels and there is still no sign of an end to the conflict,” says Eddie Rowe, WFP’s Country Director for Sudan. 

“WFP is doing everything possible to deliver life-saving assistance to millions of people in Sudan, but insecurity and access constraints are restricting us from reaching more people, especially in Khartoum and West Darfur.”

The conflict has caused severe damage to critical infrastructure nationwide, and access to food, water, cash, fuel, healthcare, and other basic services has been fractured. Moreover, razed and looted markets, broken transport networks and dysfunctional markets have strained food availability.

In West Darfur, the situation is alarming with reports of ethnic violence against civilians. Insecurity is making humanitarian access to Sudan’s most food-insecure state nearly impossible.

WFP urgently requires US$410 million for its operations in Sudan to ensure immediate life-saving assistance to conflict-affected people like Mahmoud and her family.

Learn more about WFP's work in Chad and Sudan click here to DONATE

Sudan’s crisis sends hunger shockwaves across the region

Amid soaring funding needs and displacement, the World Food Programme aims to reach millions of people affected by the conflict with ready-to-eat meals, nutritional support and cash

View original: https://www.wfp.org/stories/sudan-how-tea-seller-displaced-conflict-led-her-family-away-hunger

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A 'Lost Boy of Sudan’ Elijah Manyok Jok who became a humanitarian in South Sudan: WFP school meals vital

“Sometimes it was hard to live with just the food ration each of us received from WFP. It became easier with time when we joined efforts and shared the rations as a family. Many of children arriving at the camp presented signs of malnutrition. School meals however, proved a vital source of sustenance.

“[They] saved us from malnutrition and changed our lives," says Elijah. 

"When there were ration cuts, the school was completely empty. Kids cannot stay at school until 6pm without eating and go back home with an empty stomach.” 

Read more in article at World Food Programme (WFP) wfp.org
By Gioacchino Gargano
Dated 13 December 2021 - here is a copy in full:

World at his feet: The ‘lost boy’ who became a humanitarian in South Sudan

Recruited by militants in the nineties, Elijah Manyok Jok escaped to Kenya where he received World Food Programme school meals, joining the organization as an adult - and then setting up his own NGO

Sudanese children playing football in Zam Zam camp in 2016 – five years after South Sudan gained independence. Photo: WFP/Gabriela Vivacqua 

“My first memories of the World Food Programme as a child are the cars driving through the streets of Kakuma refugee camp,” says Elijah Manyok Jok – vehicles emblazoned with the blue letters, WFP. “I remember me and my friends running around those cars, asking for bottles of water. Back then we didn't see those bottles very often so they were very precious to us. Those cars gave us hope that something good was coming our way and that, one day, we too would be driving one of those cars. That was the only hope a refugee child could have at that time.”

The 34-year-old from Bor, a city on the eastern banks of the White Nile river in South Sudan, is the founder and chief executive of an NGO called the Smile Again Africa Development Organization and leading a humanitarian figure in his own right. 

In the early 1990s, the second Sudanese civil war stormed the southern regions of the country, bringing terror and massacres. 

Elijah left Bor, seeking refuge in the bushes of Eastern Equatorial state – starting a journey that landed him in the very sort of cars he once chased, as a WFP field monitor.

“I spent three years within the war zones and bushes of southern Sudan, wandering before joining the rest of the unaccompanied minors who later became known as the 'lost boys' of Sudan,” he says.

Elijah and other 20,000 children, from the rural region of what was then southern Sudan were displaced or orphaned during the war. The lost boys embarked on perilous journeys to the nearest refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya where thousands had been sheltered for a number of years.

Struggling to survive, they became easy targets for the armed groups — many, including Elijah, were recruited as child soldiers. In 1994, at the age of 7, Elijah managed to escape and cross the border to Kenya. After days of walking, he arrived at Kakuma refugee camp.

An undated photo of Elijah (middle) with his friends in Kakuma. 

Photo: Supplied

Growing up in Kakuma

“At first, they divided us into groups, I shared a shelter with other boys I never met before,” he says. “Then, with time, I found relatives and family friends and moved in with them”.

Then there was the issue of meals. 

“Sometimes it was hard to live with just the food ration each of us received from WFP. It became easier with time when we joined efforts and shared the rations as a family. Many of children arriving at the camp presented signs of malnutrition. School meals however, proved a vital source of sustenance."

“[They] saved us from malnutrition and changed our lives," says Elijah. "When there were ration cuts, the school was completely empty. Kids cannot stay at school until 6pm without eating and go back home with an empty stomach.”

In early 2000, the project to resettle the lost boys of Sudan brought new hope in the camp. Some 3,000 children made it to the US. “I was excited about the idea of going to the US. I was ready to start a new life and continue my studies,” says Elijah. But then came 9/11. “Everything changed, the programme was completely shut down, as well as my hope. Kakuma remained my home for the following seven years.”

The civil war finally ended in 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Elijah requested to be resettled in South Sudan.

In 2007, Elijah flew back home on a UNHCR flight. He settled in Bor, where he was finally reunited with his parents.

He enrolled in at online university to pursue a degree in business administration. Upon graduating in 2010, he received a call from WFP offering him a position as field monitor.

“There was a strong calling in me to step up and help my people help themselves,” he says. “I was a product of humanitarian efforts myself after 13 years of being a refugee, totally relying on humanitarian assistance for my food, water, shelter, protection, and education. all basics of life. I was therefore indebted to humanity and saw this as an opportunity to give back.”

And there he was, from the other side of the bulletproof window of a WFP car, looking at kids running along as his country was screaming out loud for independence.

Elijah celebrating the independence of South Sudan in 2011. 

Photo: Supplied

 “I was still working with WFP when South Sudan got its independence [in 2011]. I have wonderful memories. I was at the border with Sudan when we received the news, it was a mix of joy, shock, and disbelief. We celebrated all night, and I was the star of the party, being the only one carrying a South Sudanese flag”.

Airdrops to fight famine

After three years at WFP, Elijah broadened his experience by working with international NGOs such as Save the Children and Catholic Relief. “It was a great experience. It helped me understand how a big NGO is managed,” he says.

He then supported a group of friends founding Smile Again Africa. Since 2014, the year of a disastrous food crisis in South Sudan, he has been working full time with Smile Again Africa, which has been partnering with WFP to deliver food assistance and implement feeding programmes.

“I remember the struggles to reach the ones in need in 2014. There was no access, no roads, [a] high risk of being ambushed. That is when WFP started dropping food from the sky. I’ve been very vocal about the need for airdrops.”

Air drops are a last resort for WFP as they cost seven times more than delivering by road.

Elijah with the WFP Director of South Sudan Matthew Hollingworth, left. Photo: Supplied

With time, Elijah transformed Smile Again into a solid, national NGO focusing on food security, livelihoods, gender, education, and nutrition.

“When I joined as the new CEO of SAADO, the organization had only one office, seven staff and one computer and the first project was funded by WFP for US$19,000. Now we have 9 offices, around 600 staff members and a yearly budget of between US$9 million and 11 million.” 

Elijah doesn’t miss any opportunity to join forums and events WFP organizes for its NGO partners. 

“These consultations have really helped shaped SAADO leadership. It helped us create a bigger network and get in contact with international actors.

“When I met [WFP chief executive] David Beasley in Rome, I told him that in my life I have been dealing with WFP in almost all possible ways: I’ve been a beneficiary, I have been a staff member and now I am a partner. I am just missing becoming a donor…. we will see about that!”

Learn more about WFP's work in South Sudan

This article complements the Annual Partnership Consultation 2021, an event that WFP organizes annually to discuss strategic priorities and coordinated activities with its 800+ international and local NGOs partners

View original and photos: https://www.wfp.org/stories/world-his-feet-lost-boy-who-became-humantarian-south-sudan

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