Georgina Newman: Darfur on the brink of greater disaster

Opinion

A year ago the United Nations described the events in Darfur as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. One year on and little has changed - other than the escalating death toll. The Security Council is still hand-wringing, politicians pontificate on the semantics of genocide and peace accords are brokered and broken.

According to Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, 180,000 people have died of hunger and disease in the troubled region. The UN estimates an average of 10,000 Sudanese civilians are dying each month in the squalid displacement camps.

These catastrophic figures do not include those who have perished at the hands of the Government-backed Janjaweed militia.

Security has plummeted over the past week. Aid convoys are being targeted for attack, causing aid workers to pull out of some militia-controlled areas, abandoning those in need.

Five million people are now dependant on food aid to stay alive. If the rain fails, as it did last year, the situation will become catastrophic.

In New York the Security Council remains in deadlock over imposing sanctions on Khartoum and whether to prosecute those suspected of war crimes in the International Criminal Court. The deliberating continues as Dafur burns.

Some 1400 African Union troops are now stationed in Darfur, less than half the number promised last October. The presence of AU troops certainly helps to reduce insecurity, but their mandate is too limited and the numbers too scarce to have any real impact as they cover a region the size of France.

A year on and a new agony of atrocity is beginning - the babies born of rape.

The Janjaweed have used rape as a weapon of war. The women are raped, often in front of their husbands and children, and then rejected by their tribe, ostracised and isolated.

It is a case of too little too late as the international community continues to sit on its hands. Meanwhile, it is innocent people who bear the brunt of the world's complacency.

More than two million people have been herded into camps, fleeing the attacks. Many camps lack food, clean water and sanitation.

Insecurity, logistical constraints and a lack of funding prevent aid agencies from reaching hundreds of thousands of people in dire need. As of January only half of the people had received food rations.

Life in the displacement camps is a grim existence. No one thinks of the future, they just eke out another day of survival.

The aid agency World Vision has a presence in most of the displacement camps. It runs emergency malnutrition clinics for children on the brink of starvation.

In the malnutrition centre in Otash camp, near Nyala in Southern Darfur, rooms are lined with beds, mothers curled around children who hover on the edge of consciousness. For every child who begins taking food again, another dies.

Kaltum Hamid, 23, had the unimaginable agony of watching her only son struggle unsuccessfully for life in this clinic. She watched his breathing turn to slow panting and his eyes turn upward.

"I saw he was dying. I couldn't watch, because my heart could not take it. I just sat outside the room and wept," she said.

There are no words to describe her suffering, but she is not alone. Fatuma Adan is hungry and in the company of her five sick children. Home is now a makeshift shelter made of grass and twigs in the same displacement settlement camp.

She had taken two of her youngest, seriously malnourished children for screening.

Fatuma's husband was killed a month ago when Arab militia attacked her village.

"They broke his legs and burned our home. We had to leave him to die. I walked for two days to bring these children to a safe place," she said.

"The children saw everything. They saw their father being whipped. They don't like strangers any more," Fatuma says, pulling her youngest closer to her.

They arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Their current shelter has no plastic sheeting. The elements are formidable in Sudan, sand storms are common, as is the pelting rain.

"This is why my children are sick most of the time. They have chest problems and cough a lot," Fatuma shrugs.

World Vision is the main implementing partner of the World Food Programme in food distribution in Southern Darfur. The region has an estimated 339,787 displaced people and World Vision is planning to distribute food to more than 250,000. However, it is not enough to feed everyone.

A year on and brazen bombardments continue, villages are still being systematically torched, the men slaughtered and the women raped.

For a world that said "Never again" to the Rwandan genocide, there is a horrid feeling of deja vu.

* Georgina Newman is a journalist for World Vision. For further information see the website link below.