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Only peace will save Sudan's children, UNICEF says

She visited the famine-stricken towns of Wau and Panthou in Bahr Al Ghazal to take a first hand look at the humanitarian situation on the ground just days after a cease fire was announced by the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

"The suffering I witnessed in these famine-stricken areas was horrific. Children, who should be running and playing have become mere skeletal figures, too weak to stand and barely able to feed themselves" said Ms. Bellamy.

"Most shocking of all were the rows of freshly dug graves in Wau town, where I was told that 51 children and adults had died only hours earlier," she said.

International agencies and non-governmental organizations together are mounting what has become the largest relief operation in the 10-year history of Operation Lifeline Sudan. It is expected that the ceasefire will allow humanitarian agencies to continue to deliver life-saving assistance, including food, medicines and supplementary feeding for children without disruption. Agencies working as part of Operation Lifeline Sudan hope to stabilize the large displacements of people which has been a major cause of the spiraling famine.

While the three-month ceasefire is a welcome start, Ms. Bellamy said, what children and their families need most is a prolonged period of peace encompassing the entire area of southern Sudan. This should include western Upper Nile where insecurity is having devastating effects on the delivery of humanitarian assistance as well as on the lives of the people who live there.

"Every day the lives of countless Sudanese children and their families are being shattered by the devastating effects of war – not only by bullets – but by the slow relentless destruction of their homes, schools and livelihoods.

In government-held Wau town, where thousands of people have arrived in search of food and safe haven, Ms. Bellamy visited a health centre and a reception point where people who have barely survived for months on a staple of leaves and wild fruit gathered waiting to be admitted into the relief programme. More than 2,000 malnourished children are receiving life-saving assistance in feeding programmes supported by UNICEF and the World Food Programme and operated by non-governmental organizations in the town.

In SPLM-controlled Panthou, Ms. Bellamy saw MSF nurses ministering supplementary and therapeutic foods to young children, and witnessed a WFP food drop.

She also met with senior officials of the Government of Sudan and the SPLM to explore fully the opportunities for Operation Lifeline Sudan arising from the cease-fire.

Ms. Bellamy applauded the efforts of the World Food Programme, which is in the midst of the largest air drop in its history, aiming to double the tonnage of food delivered to 15,000 metric tons each month between now and October.

As the lead agency in the non-food sector, UNICEF is concentrating its efforts in the critical areas of supplementary and therapeutic feeding, providing essential drugs and vaccinations and ensuring clean water supplies, without which weakened children will not survive. UNICEF and NGOs have recently completed a large airlift of seeds and tools into Sudan in preparation for the planting season.

In the next few months OLS will double the number of feeding centers in the worst hit areas of Bahr Al Ghazal from 24 to 48, with UNICEF taking direct responsibility for ten of them. A recent UNICEF study in 12 locations showed that malnutrition among children below age five had risen to over 50 per cent. UNICEF, along with OLS NGOs such as Radda Barnen and SCF-UK, is providing protection and assistance to 1,000 children who have become separated from their families during the recent turmoil.

The UNICEF Executive Director also appealed to the international community to redouble efforts to help facilitate an urgently-needed political solution and said that resources to carry out the humanitarian relief operation in south Sudan were urgently needed.

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