Spokesperson of the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees, officially declared that food situation inside Darfur’s IDP camps have reached the stage of first-degree famine lamenting their being forgotten by the international community.
Khartoum: Altaghyeer
More than 561 children in Darfur’s internal displaced people (IDP) camps died of hunger during the last 11 months; at a rate of 17 children a day, said Spokesperson of the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees, Adam Rijal.
Speaking in a virtual meeting at South Darfur’s Kalma IDP camp on Monday, Rijal said more than one million children in the IDP camps suffer from acute malnutrition.
He officially declared that food situation inside Darfur’s IDP camps have reached the stage of first-degree famine citing cases of children who died from hunger and malnutrition.
Elders, pregnant and breastfeeding women are also suffering from malnutrition, Rijal said, explaining that health system inside the IDP camps has collapsed with shortage in life-saving medicines and suspension of work in the primary health care centres inside the camps.
The camps are also suffering from lack of clean drinking water, drainage and shelter items for the newly displaced people, he said.
Rijal lamented that former IDPs who have been displaced since 2003 at the beginning of the conflict in Darfur, who are more than 3 million, have been forgotten by the international community.
The total number of IDPs in displacement camps inside the country who urgently need food is more than five million, he said.
The coordination also documents cases of gross human rights violations and sheds light on the forgotten issue of IDPs by the international community.
Rijal rejected the use of relief as a weapon by some parties to the conflict stating that such act is a war crime.
The spokesperson called for an end to war, mass and individual death, tearing apart the social fabric and spreading hate speech among the society.
He called on the UN Secretary-General and his agency, the African Union, EU, the United States and the Troika countries to give the Sudanese society, especially the displaced people in the displacement and refugee camps in Darfur “the support they deserve in their plight due to the war and be treated like other societies in the world according to international human rights laws and humanity.”
