Displaced face further misery in famine-wracked Sudan

Halima Adam constantly hears about the arrival of relief shipments for those affected by the war via ships docked near her camp in Port Sudan, capital of Red Sea state in eastern Sudan, but she cannot find enough food to meet her needs.

The displaced people face great suffering and have problems with adequate shelters, food, and the severe shortage of potable water. Adam and her seven children receive what she describes as scraps of humanitarian aid, while she cannot buy food from the market due to the crushing high prices in the city. She also does not have any source of income at the present time, as she is a widow.

She told Ayin Network, which is part of the Sudan Media Forum*, last week that the last food ration she received from the Humanitarian Aid Commission was in early June. “It contained one kilogramme of flour and lentils, cooking oil, and some household utensils, and it ran out in just three days, after which we began to rely on community cooking initiatives, and we do not know where the humanitarian aid that comes from abroad goes.”

Questions and doubts about the relief coming from abroad are not only on Halima Adam’s mind, but it is the case of hundreds of thousands of displaced people sheltering in Port Sudan, who complain about not receiving humanitarian aid rations, and they face the spectre of hunger, and they find no one to answer their urgent questions, where does the aid go?

The governmental Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC**), controlled by the Sudanese army, is responsible for receiving all relief aid coming from abroad and its distribution to the states. Only the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and some Western humanitarian organisations are allowed to deliver aid themselves, according to supervisors and volunteers in the shelters in Port Sudan.

Tragic reality

The issue of aid leaking into the markets is no longer a secret, as carton boxes with the name of the donor and prints ‘for free’ containing food items such as rice, sugar and wheat flour, are found displayed on store shelves in Port Sudan and many other cities and towns in the country for sale, as repeatedly reported by emergency room volunteers and other activists.

Samya Ahmed (a pseudonym for security reasons), a volunteer in humanitarian aid in Port Sudan, told the Ayin reporter that “HAC and security departments in Port Sudan are transferring the relief shipments to native administration*** leaders in the Jebeit area, east of Port Sudan, which includes a large base for the Sudanese army, and other localities, with the aim of gaining their political loyalty to the current government and silencing their voices”.

She said that “Relief items are not only sold in the markets, but also distributed to certain directions for political appeasement, while the displaced people, in whose name humanitarian aid came, face hunger and thirst inside the shelters in Port Sudan. Their lives now depend entirely on aid given by the local community and residents neighbouring the camps, which is scarce compared to their actual need for food.”

According to Ahmed, “The government’s humanitarian aid authorities are committing a crime against the displaced people. There is no justification for them to go hungry while aid is piling up in warehouses, and other aid is going to those who do not deserve it.”

The de facto government controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Port Sudan, has repeatedly accused its adversary, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of blocking humanitarian routes and obstructing the arrival of aid to various parts of the country, which has led to hundreds of thousands of tons of aid arriving from foreign countries piling up in warehouses, as Minister of Social Development Ahmed Bakheet stated earlier.

However, international organisations accuse the government of obstructing the arrival of aid to various regions in Sudan, especially Kordofan and Darfur.

Recent talks between the army and the Rapid Support Forces in Geneva aimed at reaching a humanitarian ceasefire failed, and further talks are being arranged in Switzerland under US auspices this August.

‘Unacceptable behaviour’

Displaced Halima Adam fled her home in Khartoum North (Khartoum Bahri), to Shendi in the north. After months of suffering, she decided to travel to Port Sudan in search of a better living situation, given the presence of the central government offices.

However, she encountered a more tragic reality in the city overlooking the Red Sea coast. “My husband died at the beginning of the war between the army and the RSF, leaving me with seven sons and daughters, without a breadwinner. Since our arrival in Port Sudan, we have been living under difficult humanitarian conditions. There is a severe shortage of food, as HAC officers distribute limited food aid rations that are not enough for our needs for two days.”

Port Sudan houses about 239,000 displaced people residing in 34 shelter centres, such as schools and government institutions, according to a tally issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan, issued last February.

In the El Ashi shelter centre, the hundreds of families there remained without food for three consecutive days following torrential floods that swept through the centre, which led to the collapse of some tents.

No humanitarian interventions took place, according to what Abdallah, a displaced person residing in the camp, told Ayin.

“We contacted HAC through the supervisors at the centre, asking them to intervene and save our lives, but nothing happened so far. Tents collapsed, and we are now out in the open. Even the simple food supplies, we had, were swept away by the waters, while the security agents at the centre have strictly forbidden us to film the suffering and upload it to social media,” he said.

“We did not receive enough relief, as it is distributed after two months, and most of it is expired and damaged, perhaps as a result of long storage. This is unacceptable behaviour, forbidden by religion and law.

“We are hungry and living rough without shelter. We also lack clean drinking water, and medicines are completely non-existent. There are many displaced people who suffer from chronic diseases and do not get the permanent treatments they need. It is a humanitarian tragedy that we have never witnessed in our lives before.”

As the war drags on and aid reaches affected people is disrupted, food insecurity rates are rising, with 17.7 million people in Sudan facing acute hunger including five million who have reached the emergency phase of hunger, and 8.5 million people are expected to soon reach the emergency phase of famine as well, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Leaks

According to Salma (a pseudonym for a volunteer in Port Sudan’s emergency rooms), HAC continues to impose restrictions on the work of the emergency rooms, set up by grassroots activists in the neighbourhoods of many cities and towns in Sudan. “They prevent humanitarian organisations from cooperating with us on the pretext that we are not registered with HAC,” she told the Ayin Network reporter.

“The emergency rooms volunteers are not allowed access to the shelters for the displaced and distribute aid collected from local charities and shop owners. Instead, HAC even demanded control over this limited social support that volunteers collected from local residents and merchants, and demanded we hand over the relief items to them.

“There is clear corruption and manipulation in the aid coming from abroad, and we see it in the markets on a daily basis. The displaced people face great suffering and have problems with adequate shelters, food, and the severe shortage of potable water.”

Ayin contacted the Sudanese acting Minister of Social Development, Ahmed Bakheet, on the claims of aid being sold in the markets, as humanitarian aid falls under his authority. However, Bakheet answered that “Unfortunately, we cannot speak, because the responsibility of supervising humanitarian work has been transferred to the Prime Minister’s Office, so you can knock on the door of Osman Hussein, the head of the assigned council, to answer your questions, or go directly to the HAC commissioner-general”.

HAC Commissioner-General Salwa Adam replied to questions of ayin about the allegations of tampering with humanitarian aid coming from abroad, by saying that she “cannot speak because she is outside Sudan at the present time”.

#StandWithSudan

---

* This report was produced as part of the #StandWithSudan campaign launched by the Sudan Media Forum in April this year, to draw attention to the humanitarian disaster, avert famine, and halt violence against civilians in Sudan. It has been published in Arabic simultaneously by 27 press and media institutions and organisations participating in the campaign.

** Under the regime of President Omar Al Bashir (1989-2019), Sudan’s then infamous Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) was mostly staffed by security officers who frequently denied access to INGOs and often treated foreign aid workers as western spies.

*** The Native Administration was instituted by British colonial authorities seeking a pragmatic system of governance that allowed for effective control with limited oversight by the state. The state-appointed tribal leaders were also responsible for executing policies, collecting taxes, and mobilising labour on behalf of the central government. The Native Administration during the 30-year rule of dictator Omar Al Bashir reportedly did not represent the real community leaders.