UN food relief agency calls for $11 million to help refugees in Chad
The United Nations food relief agency today issued an urgent appeal for $11 million to help feed the most vulnerable among the almost 100,000 Sudanese refugees who have fled the country’s war-torn Darfur region over the last year for neighbouring Chad.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said the funds are needed to assist some 60,000 of about 95,000 people who have either settled in makeshift camps or moved in with Chadian families along the precarious border between the two countries.
They are considered the worst-off of a growing number of Sudanese fleeing the three Darfur provinces in western Sudan as civil war between the Sudanese Government and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) continues to rage there.
The WFP appeal comes as the UN’s refugee agency announced plans to speed up the relocation of many of those refugees to safer camps away from the border, where they have been exposed to repeated raids by militia groups.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it expects to begin pre-registering the first refugees on Thursday, ahead of the expected transfer to a refugee camp being constructed at Farchana, 55 kilometres from the Chad-Sudan border.
The Farchana camp should now be ready to accept its first refugees this weekend, several days earlier than previously expected, following construction by UNHCR and the German non-governmental organization GTZ.
But UNHCR cautioned that the relocation would take several weeks because of poor road conditions and logistical problems. Up to 9,000 people are expected to live in the Farchana camp once it is completed.
The refugees will receive a food package, which includes enough sorghum, corn flour and oil for 15 days, from WFP when they arrive. They will also be vaccinated and receive blankets, mattresses, mosquito nets, kitchen sets, soap and jerry cans from UNHCR.
The Chadian Government and UNHCR have identified two other potential sites for refugee camps which will house 28,000 people between them.