A SPECIAL UPDATE FROM TEAM ZAMZAM
UN World Food Program Finally Reaches Zamzam
In an unanticipated but hugely significant development, the UN’s World Food Program has finally reached Zamzam IDP camp and its vast environs. The BBC reports that three convoys, comprising 700 trucks, have arrived or are on their way. The dispatch is unclear on this key point, since WFP food is also on its way to Zamzam from Port Sudan, as opposed to the convoys that have actually arrived from Ádre on the Chad/Sudan border.
The dispatch also gives 500,000 as the population of the camp, even as it acknowledges the camp population has “ballooned” since April, and we have no way of ascertaining an accurate census. Nonetheless, reports from the ground and evidence from satellite imagery of Zamzam and its environs strongly suggest that the population in need exceeds 1 million IDPs. The photo below gives a sense of how rapid growth of the camp has been:
Photograph from the Yale University Humanitarian Relief Lab
The food delivered (or on the way) to Zamzam will feed 1.5 million people for a month, according to WFP—which makes it possible that the high-end estimate of those in and around Zamzam will consume all food assistance within that one month. And now that food is available in Zamzam, it will become a magnet for other areas of North Darfur, especially rural areas that are also now experiencing famine conditions. Indeed, people may also come from Central and South Darfur, areas that have also seen exceedingly little food aid.
The logistical challenges of food distribution (as opposed to delivery) will be daunting for this vast and growing population. Here the expertise and camp knowledge of the counselors of Team Zamzam would be invaluable.
Critical also to the well-being of the people of Zamzam are medical supplies and much more substantial supplies of drinking water. And the threat of the Rapid Support Forces, still laying siege to El Fasher 15 kilometers to the northeast, cannot be ignored.
What this means for Team Zamzam:
This news of the WFP food delivery will be celebrated by the counselors of Team Zamzam for many reasons. But it will be lost on no member of the Team that their efforts, especially over the past three years, have provided food, water, and medical care in a way that has kept thousands of people alive to have a chance for more than days of hunger, suffering, and death. The many tons of food distributed to those most needs; the rehabilitation of nine critical water wells; and the provision of transportation and accompaniment for those in medical need (including some 90 fistula surgeries for girls and women physically injured by sexual violence)—these have all been made possible by the indefatigable efforts of Team Zamzam.
The entire Team celebrates this historic food delivery, even as we know that there must be a continuous stream of food and other assistance to avoid the consequences of famine, water shortages and the lack of medical care.
Our efforts in Zamzam will continue as they have: WFP distribution of food will miss some of the most vulnerable, and Team Zamzam will assist them; it may again be possible to rehabilitate water wells (the recent convoy contained no provisions for improving the water supply); Team Zamzam will continue to attend key meetings of camp leaders; and when possible, they will again escort those in acute medical need to El Fasher for treatment.
And we will continue to assist girls and women traumatized by over 20 years of extreme, finally genocidal sexual violence. More than 300 girls and women are on the waiting list for reparative fistula surgery. And thousands are in urgent need of psycho-social counseling—counseling that has been provided to many thousands of girls and women since the inception of our project in summer 2020.
[An annual report on the activities of Team Zamzam will be forthcoming at the end of December]
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BBC News (Nairobi), November 22, 2024 | https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7y551newo
The United Nation’s World Food Programme is attempting to transport aid across Sudan, home to world’s biggest humanitarian crisis A famine-stricken camp housing about 500,000 displaced people in Sudan has received its first convoy of aid in months. The United Nations’ trucks arrived in Zamzam – which houses masses forced to flee during Sudan’s 18-month civil war – on Friday.
[In fact, reports from the ground and evidence from satellite imagery of Zamzam and its environs strongly suggest that the population in need exceeds 1 million IDPs—ER]
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said food deliveries had been held up for months by fierce fighting in the nearby Darfur city of el-Fasher, as well as the “impassable” roads brought on by the rainy season….
The population of Zamzam has reportedly ballooned since April, when the RSF began battling to take el-Fasher from the army. El-Fasher is the only city still under military control in the western region of Darfur. In August, an independent group of food security experts determined that the war had pushed Zamzam into famine.
The conditions for classifying an area to be in famine are that at least 20% of households must be facing an extreme lack of food, with 30% of children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease.
The food convoy to Zamzam is part of a major surge in the WFP’s efforts to reach those in the “most needy and isolated conflict areas”, the organisation said. Three convoys in total with more than 700 trucks have been dispatched with enough to feed 1.5 million people for over a month, the statement said.
Some of the food aid is also heading to South Kordofan state.
[This is one of the more significant facts noted in this dispatch: the Kordofans have also been deeply affected by acute and severe acute malnutrition—ER]
“These trucks carry more than just food; they carry a lifeline for people caught in the crossfire of conflict and hunger. We need guaranteed safe passage for our trucks and sustained international support to reach every family at risk,” Laurent Bukera, the WFP’s regional director for eastern Africa, said. The warring sides have both been accused of blocking and looting aid, but both deny the allegations.
The convoy that arrived in Zamzam camp on Friday had left Adré on the border with Chad on 9 November – a key route for bringing aid into Darfur. This corridor had been closed by an order from the army-controlled government in February and re-opened for three months in August.
Members of the government had protested against the opening, arguing that it allows for the RSF to deliver weapons, the Reuters news agency reported. Last week, the government agreed to keep it open for another three months.
A second convoy of WFP aid left the army stronghold of Port Sudan, Sudan’s only port, 10 days ago and it is also heading to Zamzam camp in the west.