ENI—The Roman Catholic bishop in Sudan, Antonio Menegazzo, is warning that the humanitarian situation in the country’s western Darfur region is worsening, nearly a month after President Omar al Bashir ejected 13 relief organizations.
“The expelled organizations were coping with at least 40 per cent of all the humanitarian help,” said Menegazzo, the apostolic administrator of El Obeid, the Sudanese diocese, which covers Darfur.
The government had promised to replace the expelled aid organizations with Sudanese ones, but he questioned where they would get the funds and the specialized people to do so. Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir expelled the agencies soon after the International Criminal Court indicted him on charges of crimes against humanity committed in Darfur.
“We have already been told that water pumps in some Darfur camps have stopped pumping, and there are growing fears about the potential for outbreaks of disease … The expulsion is already affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of the very poorest and most vulnerable Sudanese people,” said Penny Lawrence, international director of Oxfam, one of the expelled agencies.
