Thousands of displaced people in Sudan need urgent assistance: World Vision

Friday, January 7, 2011

In the lead up to the long‐awaited referendum in Sudan, World Vision Australia today called on the international community to provide urgent assistance to ensure the safety and wellbeing of thousands of Sudanese civilians who have been displaced due to violence or who have moved south to vote.

On Sunday 9 January, the people of Southern Sudan will vote in a referendum to decide if they remain part of Sudan or become the world’s newest country. The timing for a vote on whether Abyei, an oil‐rich area on the border between the north and the south, will join either side remains uncertain.

“World Vision hopes the referendum will take place in a free, fair and timely manner,” World Vision’s Humanitarian Emergency Affairs Manager Anthea Spinks said.

“However we are deeply concerned about the thousands of South Sudanese who have left the north in order to participate in the upcoming referendum, and other Sudanese who have fled armed conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region.

“More than 53,000 people have already arrived in South Sudan and the United Nations Office for the Co‐ordination of Humanitarian Affairs says thousands more are on their way. Humanitarian agencies need urgent assistance from developed nations to provide protection, basic services and resettlement support for these people.”

Southern Sudan is extremely poor and humanitarian agencies fear this great influx of people will impose further pressure on limited resources.

The United Nations Development Program estimates that 90 percent of people in Southern Sudan live in poverty; barely one in five children complete primary school; clean water is only available to one in four people in some regions and the number of women who die giving birth is among the highest in the world.

“The situation in the transit camps where the returnees and displaced people are located is dire. Thousands of men, women and children are sleeping without shelter and there aren’t any toilet facilities,” Ms Spinks said.

“World Vision and other organisations are stockpiling essential relief provisions such as emergency health and food supplies and drinking water, but this alone will not be enough. Acccess to camps is also vital. With such a large movement of people there is an increased risk of outbreak of disease and that food supplies will run short.”

Sudan has been at war for most of its history as a nation. The last civil war endured for more than two decades, one of the longest in Africa, ending only on the signing of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005. The civil war resulted in an estimated 2 million deaths and 4 million refugees. The referendum is part of the final conditions of the CPA.

World Vision has worked in Sudan since the 1980s with programs in water and sanitation, food security, livelihoods, peace building, health and education.

ENDS

Anthea Spinks is available for media interviews. To arrange interviews please contact Bill Pheasant on 0413 701 028 (today) or Sacha Myers on 0457 926 018 (Saturday and Sunday).

Media Releases, Africa, Conflict, Election, Foreign Aid, Refugee Crisis, South Sudan, Sudan

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