Blue Nile: ‘Food insecure displaced return to villages despite poor security’

The recently displaced residing in Ed Damazin, capital of Blue Nile region, are experiencing severe food insecurity, causing some to return to their villages, despite the poor security situation which prompted them to leave in the first place.

Activist Salah Ed Dalil told Radio Dabanga from Ed Damazin, capital of Blue Nile region*, that the food and living conditions of the displaced people in the city are “tragic”.

He called on the Blue Nile government to intervene, as “security assistance needs to be provided for returnees” and on Sudan’s Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) to direct relief organisations in providing much-needed assistance to the region.

According to Fatima Mousa, a displaced woman living in Medina 9 in Wad El Mahi, the government of the Blue Nile region “demanded that they voluntarily return to their homes”. She condemned “the callousness of their request”, due to the fact that she and others like her, “lost everything they owned because of arson and looting”.

Intercommunal violence in the northern part of Blue Nile region in July and September last year led to the displacement of at least 66,000 people.

Food insecurity

Humanitarian organisations have highlighted acute food insecurity across Sudan. In reports, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan asserted three months ago that the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in Sudan will rise to 15.8 million in 2023, equivalent to about a third of the population, which represents an increase of 1.5 million over last year.

In July last year, Radio Dabanga reported that Sudan’s poverty and food insecurity rates are likely to be significantly higher than those estimated by the country’s authorities and the UN.

Cultivation expansion

The director of the Ministry of Agriculture in Khartoum, Sirelkhatim Abdellatif, stated that he plans to expand cultivation in an effort to achieve food security, according to the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA).

In a press statement, Abdellatif said that the ministry’s plan focuses on increasing irrigation and rain fed areas to “exploit the arable areas in Khartoum state to increase production”.

According to the director’s statement, the ministry’s agricultural endeavour of increasing productive feddans will thoroughly “encourage youth employment”.

* On August 8 last year, Gen Ahmed El Omda, Governor of the then Blue Nile state, issued a number of decrees based on the October 2020 Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) by which Blue Nile state became a region, and its seven localities became ‘governorates’. International IDEA stated in an analysis in 2021 that though the Blue Nile and Kordofan protocol incorporated in the JPA grants autonomy to these states, it does not specifically provide that they become a region.