‘Sirba camps for the displaced are now quasi-towns’: West Darfur HAC officials

The displaced of all ten Sirba camps in West Darfur State have been told by the Sudanese government’s Humanitarian Affairs Commission (HAC) of the Sirba locality that the camps are not longer being recognised as camps for the displaced. The spokesman for the Sirba camps for the displaced reported to Radio Dabanga that last week the camps’ elders met with HAC officials in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, in order to discuss the stoppage of the monthly food rations since October 2012 and the current, dire situation the displaced are living in. “One could better call it a famine, caused by the failure of the recent agricultural season and the absence of food aid.” The HAC officials told the sheikhs of the Sirba camps that the return of food rations is out of the question. They said that Sirba locality does not recognise the camps anymore, as the camps have become quasi-towns, while the residents are all farmers. The spokesman described the words of the HAC officials as “totally false”. He called on the Sudanese government, the UN and its agencies to be credible, and to base its operations on facts, not on unjust decisions, and demanded from them to reconsider the provision of food rations for the displaced in order to prevent a disaster, “especially after the failure of the current planting season”. “The conditions of the displaced in all the ten Sirba camps is disastrous,” the spokesman stressed, summing up the number of displaced recorded in each camp: Tanjaki  7,446, Kan Deby 12,360, Bir Dageeg 18,736, Sirba 15,113, Abu Suruj 30,819, Armankul 19,733, Ban Jadeed 18,618, Saraf Jidad 13,321, Bir Saleeba 6,165, and the Sawani camp 12,503. File photo