By Frank Nyakairu
NAIROBI (AlertNet) - Up to 60 percent of aid to humanitarian hotspots in Sudan could be choked off by last week's expulsion of 13 foreign relief agencies, one of the expelled groups said on Monday.
Speaking at a news conference in Nairobi, where some of the agencies are now hastily regrouping, the head of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Holland said the expulsion of his organisation alone would affect 450,000 people in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region.
"These expulsions will cost up to 60 percent of aid that goes to very vulnerable areas," Hans Van de Weerd said. "Organisations that have been targeted had substantial volumes of work providing food aid, water and sanitation and medical services."
MSF Holland was one of 13 foreign and three local agencies that got their marching orders last week after a Hague court issued a warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on war crimes charges. Bashir has since threatened to expel more groups.
MSF Holland said it had been providing assistance to 150,000 sick people, 10,000 pregnant women and 2,000 malnourished children at Kalma, Feina and Muhajariya camps in South Darfur.
"We left some of the patients in the wards," Van de Weerd said. "We don't know what will happen."
He said the group had been targeted by the government on suspicion it was clandestinely working for the ICC, a claim it denies. He said government security agents ransacked aid agency offices, seizing computers and personal items.
The expulsion came just as MSF was preparing a mass vaccination of 130,000 people following an outbreak of deadly meningitis at Kalma camp.
"There already 32 cases confirmed and we fear that the spread will be fast and affect very many people," Philip Ejikon, MSF's medical coordinator in Darfur, said. "Its mortality, if not treated, can be around 50 percent."
The expulsions have sparked a wave of criticism from the United Nations, Western countries and leaders from the ruling party in Sudan's semi-autonomous south.
Before the expulsions, the United Nations and aid groups were running the world's largest humanitarian operation in Darfur where, international experts say, almost six years of conflict have killed 200,000 people and displaced more than 2.7 million people from their homes.
A worker from Sichuan cuts a huge slab of stone into blocks using a machete in the southern Chinese city of Huizhou in Guangdong province March 9, 2009. The drilling of ...
