WFP boosts aid in Chad amid Sudan crisis
N'Djamena, Chad (PANA) - UN humanitarians are working around the clock to pre-position aid in Chad for Sudanese refugees fleeing the violence at home before the rains come.
The World Food Programme (WFP) announced the operation on Tuesday and warned that lifesaving programmes in Chad will stop because of a funding crunch “in a matter of weeks”.
Thousands of Sudan refugees continue to stream over the border into Chad to escape heavy fighting between warring generals that began last April.
The aid they need must be delivered before seasonal rains flood roads serving camps for the displaced in the east, cutting off access, WFP said.
Most refugees cross the border into Sudan traumatised, hungry and with “horrific tales of violence”, the UN agency reported.
It noted that the new arrivals rely entirely on humanitarian assistance to survive and that four in 10 Sudanese refugee children under-five suffer from severe anaemia.
“The spillover from the crisis in Sudan is overwhelming an underfunded and overstretched humanitarian response in Chad. We need donors to prevent the situation from becoming an all-out catastrophe," warned WFP Country Director in Chad, Pierre Honnorat.
The UN agency explained that a vital cross-border supply route into Sudan’s conflict-scarred Darfur region is also at risk.
This is the only “reliable” route into embattled western Sudan, said WFP, which said that it had made it possible to help one million people in Darfur since last August.
“Cutting assistance to communities facing this level of vulnerability is unthinkable,” Mr. Honnorat said, warning that families had no option but to “skip meals and eat less nutrition food, laying the ground for crises of nutrition, crises of instability and crises of displacement”.
To ensure continued support to crisis-affected people in Chad over the next six months, WFP urgently needs $242 million.
-0- PANA MA 13March2024
