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Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

SUDAN: Access denial threatens to worsen humanitarian crisis

NAIROBI, 24 May (IRIN) - A grouping of nine prominent aid agencies working
in Sudan on Thursday warned of the potential for a worsening humanitarian
crisis in the south of the country as increased conflict and ongoing flight
bans have cut off access to hundreds of thousands of people at a critical
time.

"All the conditions are in place for a crisis: lots of fighting, no access
for humanitarian assistance, and many frightened, hungry, displaced people,"
said Jeff Seed, Director of CARE International's operations in southern
Sudan.

Even before recent outbreaks of fighting and reduced access, human
development indicators were already discouraging in southern Sudan,
particularly for those affected by war in Unity (Wahdah) State/western Upper
Nile, the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, northern and western
Bahr al-Ghazal, and Eastern Equatoria, according to the UN.

On Thursday, the nine aid NGOs called on the warring parties in Sudan to
guarantee periods of tranquillity during which fighting would be suspended
to allow safe access to affected populations. Such periods and zones of
tranquillity are a key element of confidence-building measures proposed by
US special peace envoy, John Danforth.

The organisations also "urged the international community to make clear the
extreme urgency of the situation to their Sudanese counterparts and to press
for immediate humanitarian access".

In addition to CARE, the aid agencies which joined the urgent call for
humanitarian access were: Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services (CRS),
International Rescue Committee (IRC), Oxfam, Action Against Hunger (ACF
USA), Tearfund, Foundation Amurt and World Vision.

The NGOs highlighted, in particular, the problems of severe fighting and
flight bans in three areas of southern Sudan: Bahr el-Ghazal, Eastern
Equatoria and western Upper Nile, which have cut off humanitarian access to
hundreds of thousands of people.

In Bahr el-Ghazal and western Upper Nile, the flight bans had been in place
for as long as three months; in Eastern Equatoria, the ban had been in place
for at least three years, Thursday's statement said. On 16 May, the
government of Sudan announced a flight ban for the entire area of Unity
State, encompassing western Upper Nile.

In southern Sudan, all told, "an area of land roughly the size of France is
now off-limits to large-scale relief efforts," according to Thursday's joint
statement from NGOs operational there.

"Increased fighting has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their
homes at a critical moment - the start of the planting season when crops
must be sown to avoid a potentially life-threatening food crisis," it added.

Fighting is raging in Unity State/western Upper Nile between Sudanese
government and aligned militia forces, on the one hand, and the rebel Sudan
People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), on the other, essentially over
control of the area's rich oil resources. This battle for resources has
exacerbated the long-running civil war in Sudan, where basic issues of
safety, food security, health and nutrition affect millions of people,
according to several human rights organisations.

There are also extensive military engagements in Bahr
al-Ghazal -exacerbated, ironically, by the redeployment of forces from the
Nuba Mountains, where a local ceasefire agreement is in place - although the
approach of the rainy season offers hope that these will soon ease, aid
officials told IRIN on Thursday.

Though fighting and the denial of access in large swathes of southern Sudan
make it impossible for aid groups to accurately determine the severity of
the situation, the information that is available is causing concern; the
most recent nutritional surveys conducted by both ACF-USA and Tearfund found
global malnutrition rates in children under five years to be more than 20
percent in some areas.

"These results have been reported at the start of the hunger gap [the period
between harvests] and this situation can only deteriorate unless action is
taken," said Maxine Clayton, head of mission of Action Against Hunger-USA's
humanitarian programs. Global malnutrition rates above 15 percent are
considered to give serious cause for concern.

The last time aid agencies were cut off from civilians for such an extended
period was in 1998, when a flight ban prevented distribution of food and
other relief supplies to Bahr el Ghazal for four consecutive months,
according to the NGOs.

On that occasion, they said, "flight bans, poor climatic conditions and an
upsurge in fighting were responsible for a famine that killed at least
70,000 people".

Freedom of access to vulnerable populations - an international humanitarian
principle - is guaranteed under a beneficiary protocol of Operation Lifeline
Sudan (OLS), which established principles for the protection and provision
of aid to war-affected populations in Sudan.

Despite repeated calls for unrestricted access and agreements by the warring
parties to assure this, military operations, insecurity, flight bans and the
government's alleged depopulation of oil-rich areas to secure them for
production have displaced and/or precluded access to hundreds of thousands
of civilians.

With an estimated 80,000 people displaced from Ruweng County and another
50,000 from Unity State/western Upper Nile in a pattern of depopulation of
oil areas by government forces and aligned militias, the government's ban on
humanitarian flights "jeopardises the lives of tens of thousands of people",
the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan reported earlier this month.

Khartoum denies that is targeting civilian populations in oil areas and has
blamed the SPLM/A for escalating military operations and causing the
deterioration of humanitarian conditions in Unity/western Upper Nile.

It has also said it will permit land and river corridors for the delivery of
relief materials (though aid agencies say relief work would be severely
hampered by having such access only, given poor infrastructure and heavy
rains), and that it is studying UN proposals "on ways to facilitate
conveying humanitarian assistance to the needy," according to the official
Sudan News Agency (SUNA).

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in
Sudan, Gerhart Baum, has repeatedly criticised the severely hampered access
of vulnerable people to humanitarian aid in parts of southern Sudan -
despite the government and the SPLM/A having formally endorsed the principle
of unimpeded access to beneficiaries.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also expressed concern about this in a
report to the UN Security Council report in October 2001, when he said it
was "paramount to ensure the respect by all signatories" of binding
agreements on unrestricted humanitarian access.

"It is especially important for the humanitarian action in critical areas of
southern Sudan to benefit from an extension of the humanitarian space and to
operate with [at least] minimal security guarantees," he stated. [see
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=12480] [2]

This point was echoed again on Thursday in the combined aid agencies
statement on access.

"We desperately need action from leaders on both sides of the conflict in
Sudan and in the international community to protect innocent civilians,
facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance, and to achieve a just
and lasting peace", said Paul Townsend, country representative for CRS in
Sudan.

[ENDS]

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