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By Salah Omar
KASSALA, Sudan, June 4 (AFP)-Hosting half of some 60,000 Eritrean refugees who fled to Sudan from the war with Ethiopia, Laffa is a dusty, windswept and sunbaked camp that lacks just about everything, laments the camp's administrator. It is in dire need of food, water, medicines, health services, insecticides, spraying pumps, and tents or any other kind of shelter, said the camp's manager Abdel Monim Mahmud al-Habbak. Just how stark life can be was underscored by the experience of one woman who had to deliver her child under a tree by herself as there is not a single midwife or gynecologist available, added Habbak, a retired army colonel. The other 42 women who have given birth in the last couple of weeks were helped by physicians in the camp's five clinics set up by the local government and national and foreign NGOs. Many plastic-sheet shelters were swept away by the strong dusty wind that hit the camp on Saturday, leaving the 32,000 registered camp inhabitants in the open. Life is especially hard for vulnerable young children. The camp "is not suitable for children because of the lack of food and health services," said Afeet Mohammed Idris, 25, who came from Teseney with her five children, mother and three young brothers who are still small children. Idris added that her husband is a soldier on the front and "we know nothing about him." And Habbak said conditions could only get worse as refugees continue to pour in to Sudan and the Kassala state government here cannot "shoulder this heavy burden any longer." Echoing repeated calls from Sudanese officials, he urged the international community to "come forward to avert an epidemic and environmental disaster due to a thronging crowd of people in a limited space of land, with the rainfall in sight." Rains usually come in August. The World Food Program (WFP) and national and Arab philanthropic organizations are offering food, but the quantities are insufficient due to the increasing numbers of refugees pouring into the camp, with many still unregistered. The WFP distributes food only to registered refugees. A Saudi Arabian NGO Saturday distributed 20 tones of fresh dates while Qatari and Kuwaiti NGOs distributed ready meals to the refugees in the camp, Habbak said. The Kassala state government's resources are too poor to cope with the huge water demand, posing a threat to environmental health, the camp manager noted. Insufficient medicines and medical treatment of malaria, diarrhea, chest and sex-related disease are offered by the local government, the governmental Commission of Refugees (COR), and such foreign nongovernmental organizations as the American International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the Dutch MSF, the official said. There are only 600 tents in the camp made available by the UNHCR, while IRC and the British Save the Children have offered plastic sheets, some of which were used as shelters for lack of tents, the camp manager said, adding that numerous refugees are still under the sun or trees. In addition to the Eritreans, Laffa camp hosts about 100 Ethiopian refugees who happened to have been in western Eritrea when the war broke out. Buntom Melka, 22, an Ethiopian, said she arrived with Eritrean refugees from Teseney, where she had been stranded since 1998. "I have no problem living with the Eritreans ...we are all refugees," said Melka, a Christian, although, she noted that some Muslim Eritreans would not like the company of Christian women "because we smoke." Meanwhile, the authorities are planning to move Gerghef, one of the three main border camps, to a place 25 kilometers (15 miles) away from the borderline for the lack of water. The Kassala refugee housing chief, Adil Dafaallah Abdel Hai, said that UNHCR, the local government and COR have agreed to move the Gerghef camp from its present location where the water is brought from Shagarab, some 70 kilometers away. A total of 57,694 Eritrean refugees are registered in Sudan. |
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