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UN relief agencies rally aid for Darfur Sudanese

UN relief agencies rally aid for Darfur Sudanese

Sudanese refugees
United Nations relief agencies are continuing to rally aid for Sudanese displaced from the country's Darfur region in the west, providing clean drinking water, airlifting emergency supplies to the area and distributing food aid.

The Sudanese Government had been accused of doing little to call off Arab militias attacking black civilians in Darfur, but recently promised to give entry visas quickly to humanitarian workers and waive the requirement for permits to travel around region.

With the rainy season due to start in a few weeks, some 700,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in western Sudan lack access to safe wells and water points, although the number of IDPs who can now collect safe drinking water recently doubled to 300,000, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said today.

"Access to clean water is of paramount importance," said JoAnna van Gerpen, UNICEF Representative in Sudan's capital, Khartoum. "While every effort we make in health, nutrition and protection is a building block in saving the lives of countless children, clean water goes to the heart of a child's good health in a crisis."

UNICEF said it has worked closely with the Sudanese National Water Corporation to rehabilitate old pumps and install new ones throughout North, South and West Darfur. Almost 190 new pumps have been installed and 320 existing pumps repaired in IDP camps and in the towns that have taken in large numbers of displaced families.

For some families the new and rehabilitated pumps have reduced a woman's traditional five-hour journey for water to less than half that, UNICEF said, adding that it would continue providing the IDPs with soap, mugs, buckets and jerry cans, as well as more latrines.

In other news, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said a new emergency airlift of relief supplies for refugees from Darfur in eastern Chad would start today, with the first flight departing Denmark and scheduled to arrive tomorrow in the Chadian capital N'djamena.

UNCHR said there are an estimated 125,000 Sudanese refugees in Chad, including the more than 76,000 moved to seven camps set up away from the border area. "We fear that this figure could increase very quickly if the situation does not improve for Darfur, where there are close to one million displaced persons in camps," said UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond.

Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said it has started to distribute food aid to 800,000 people. Access to the region had improved after last month's ceasefire agreement, and the agency said it hoped to be able to better assess new needs.