SUDAN: Fears of permanent dependency by IDPs

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

EL FASHER, 16 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - For over 15 years, more than 30,000 people from the Dinka community of Sudan's Bahr el Ghazal State have lived in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the strife-torn western region of Darfur.

After the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) signed a peace agreement with the Khartoum government in January, many of them decided to return home.

However, southern Sudan was far from the haven they had hoped to return to; they found it desperately poor and devoid of the most basic services.

"They came back a little shocked by what they had seen in southern Sudan," Keith McKenzie, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) representative for the Darfur emergency, said.

"I think it is safe to say that they might stay in Darfur for most of the transitional period [next six years], until a little more development has taken place in the south," he added.

The Dinkas in Darfur exemplify a problem that is worrying the wider humanitarian community - how to adequately support hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people without creating large aid-dependent populations who don't want to go back home.

In Abu Shouk camp on the outskirts of El Fasher, North Darfur's capital, the IDPs receive free food, healthcare, water and sanitation facilities.

Fuel-efficient stoves are provided, 12,800 children attend primary school, and children can sing, dance and play games in child-friendly spaces around the camp.

"I expect that of our 4,000 families who came to Abu Shouk, [only] 2,000 would like to go back. Two thousand would like to stay," Salih Yagoub Yuma, the "Omda" (leader) of his Fur community, said.

AID WORKS

Approximately 1.9 million people in Darfur - about one third of the total population - are IDPs living with relatives in larger towns or sheltering in the sprawling camps on the edge of some of the major towns.

"One of the big successes [of the humanitarian operation] has been that major disease outbreaks have been avoided here, in large part due to early warning systems," Aoibheann O'keeffe, acting head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in El Fasher, told IRIN.

The scale of food assistance is also unparalleled. In June and July, for example, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) provided food to 2.1 million people in Darfur.

As a result of this vast aid operation, mortality rates had dropped, on average, to about a third of what they were last year, a recent survey by the UN World Health Organization and the Sudanese Ministry of Health found.

"I think the humanitarian situation remains fragile and although assistance has been increasing, the needs remain vast, and the needs will continue for the foreseeable future," O'keeffe noted.

WATER AND SANITATION

The area between El Fasher and Abu Shouk is littered with massive holes the size of basketball fields, bearing witness to the size of the informal brick-making economy that thrived here until recently.

Water is a scarce commodity in the arid region around El Fasher, and because it is free for the camp inhabitants, a substantial informal water economy sprung up in and around the camp.

A large amount of the water provided was used to make bricks.

At one point, about 30 percent of the water distributed in the camp was being resold, Dorn Townsend, UNICEF communications officer in El Fasher, estimated.

"The priority is for drinking and cleaning, not for brick-making. It leads to excessive water use," Naresh Gurung, UNICEF resident programme officer in El Fasher, said.

Townsend said the bricks were mainly sold within the camp; many of Abu Shouk's shelters are surrounded by a low brick wall to provide some shelter and privacy in the sea of tents that extends until the horizon.

"The brick production has all but ceased now, although some people might still be producing them on a small scale within their homesteads," O'keeffe said.

Voluntary water-use committees, supported by the government's water and environmental sanitation (WES) department, were now monitoring the use of the water pumps, she added.

Moving 22,000 people to nearby El Salaam IDP camp had also helped to reduce the pressure on the scarce water resources in the camp.

Nevertheless, the 27 hand pumps in Abu Shouk were insufficient to provide camp residents with the required 14 litres of water per person per day, and water tankers had to ferry an additional 300,000 litres into the camp daily, a WES staff member said.

Sanitation and hygiene within Abu Shouk also presented their own difficulties.

Gurung said despite the presence of 4,000 latrines, 2,000 other facilities and 150 hygiene promoters in the camp, sanitation remained a problem.

"We need further improvements to deal with the problem of excrement," Gurung acknowledged. "You're talking about changing people's behaviour. It will take some time - most people didn't use latrines in their villages."

For example, Townsend explained, the children were afraid of fictional people-eating monsters that they believed lived in the holes of the latrines.

"Part of the UNICEF message has been that using a latrine is not hazardous after all," he noted.

REGISTRATION

According to recent statistics, El Salaam camp had a population of 22,500, about 70 percent of whom were women and children. Many of them were recent arrivals, having fled renewed violence in November and December 2004 in Tawila and Jebel Si to the west, and Korma to the north of El Fasher.

For months, they lived in flimsy shelters at the edge of Abu Shouk camp, before they were finally moved to El Salaam on 18 June.

"The biggest problem is water and sanitation right now as the latrines have not been completed and the water pipe lines have not yet been placed," a humanitarian worker in El Salaam said.

Asked why the IDPs had been moved to an unfinished camp, she said the main priority had been to provide them with proper shelter ahead of the rainy season, illustrating the difficult dilemmas vast humanitarian emergencies inevitably generate.

Kaltum Mohamed, who was sitting with her two children in front of a structure made of a few sticks and a piece of cloth on the edge of Abu Shouk camp, was one of the new arrivals yet to be relocated to El Salaam.

"We don't want to provide shelter to families of fewer than four, otherwise families split up to receive double rations," the aid worker explained. "Small families of three or fewer people have to share a tent."

Initially, 89,000 IDPs were registered in Abu Shouk. However, a head count in May revealed the actual population to be 69,000.

In emergency situations, on average up to 20-25 percent of IDPs were doubly registered, McKenzie estimated. "It's human nature," he added.

PROTECTION

Providing adequate protection in and around the sprawling IDP camps has been another major challenge for the humanitarian community, especially because many IDPs were very suspicious of Sudanese police forces, and in some cases had denied them access to the camps altogether.

Gender-based violence was a particularly widespread problem, although exact numbers were hard to obtain, as many women were hesitant to report the crimes for cultural reasons or for fear of harassment, OCHA's O'keeffe observed.

"The numbers are running in the thousands; it is a wide-spread problem," UNICEF's McKenzie added.

He emphasized the key role played by the African Union (AU) protection force in bringing down the number of incidents.

"The AU firewood patrols and their protection-by-presence approach have been quite successful so far, leading to a significant drop in violations," he noted.

Halimah Abadallah, who was collecting firewood outside Otach IDP camp near Nyala in South Darfur, agreed.

"Before, there was a problem, but now that the AU accompanies us I haven't heard of any problem," she said.

The areas around Abu Shouk and Otach IDP camps have turned into virtual deserts, however, as all trees and vegetation have been harvested. Large round holes in the ground indicate where trees once stood; even the roots have been dug out by IDPs desperate for firewood for cooking or for sale in the market.

"First, we could find wood and grass close to the camp. Now, we have to go further - two hours walk to get there and two hours back," Halimah said.

ONGOING LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Around the camps, an informal market has sprung up where IDPs trade in non-food items such as plastic sheeting for shelter and jerry cans for water.

A group of nomads, for example, who were camping north of the town of Kabkabiya in North Darfur and complained about the lack of humanitarian assistance, had nevertheless a big white tent with a UNICEF logo standing in the middle of their camp, "bought at the market from the IDPs", the religious leader of the group said.

"The biggest issue next year will be the issue of returns," Alexandre Liebeskind, head of Darfur operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told IRIN. "It will require a combination of security guarantees [from] the Sudanese government and a very intelligent policy in terms of inciting the return of IDPs by providing assistance in rural areas."

He added: "If we want to avoid getting trapped in [a situation of] never-ending assistance to IDPs, the balance between over-assisted IDPs in camps and under-served communities in remote rural settings has to change."

[ENDS]