- HIGHLIGHTS
Security Awareness Training workshops for WFP staff began this week. The workshops are intended to improve security and safety awareness of all WFP staff in Sudan and are expected to continue well into the New Year. Training recipients will receive documents certifying their attendance and participation in the workshops
WFP carried out a number of rapid food distributions in various food insecure locations in Kapoeta County affected by drought and insecurity. These locations had remained inaccessible to WFP for several weeks due to insecurity in the area.
2. FOOD DISTRIBUTION
Northern Sector
Bahr el Ghazal
Aweil: Mixed food commodities amounting to 216 MT were distributed to 18,701 beneficiaries in Aweil town during the reporting period. The beneficiaries comprised 16,815 IDPs and local residents and were made up of 9,248 women and 7,567 men. Food was also provided to 36 TB inpatients and 555 girls and 1,295 boys through emergency school feeding programmes.
Equatoria
Food amounting to 131 MT was distributed to beneficiaries in Juba and surrounding areas during the week. The distribution comprised 123 MT to 14,888 IDPs in camps, 40 MT to 4,978 vulnerables, as well as 2 MT to 47 TB patients in the hospital and 80 refugees. Distributions were carried out by partner NGOs including OXFAM, Sudan Aid, SCC, ECS, IARA and GLRA.
Upper Nile
Pibor: A team has left WFP Malakal for Pibor. The team will receive the scheduled airdrop and prepare for distributions during the next reporting period.
Southern Sector
Bahr el Ghazal
In Aweil East County, a total of 10,000 targeted beneficiaries received 100 MT of food in Mangar Angui and 11,700 beneficiaries received 86 MT of food in Wuncum. In Gogrial County, a total of 4,200 beneficiaries received 24 MT of food in Peth and 10,570 beneficiaries received 77 MT of food in Tieraliet. In Twic County, 21,872 beneficiaries received 89 MT of food in Ajakuac.
Equatoria
WFP delivered a total of 125 MT of food to Kiklai, New Cush and Latukei in Kapoeta County as well as Lorema in Torit County in the same region. This rapid intervention was carried out after WFP and CRS received reports of a worsening food security situation in the area following drought and continued insecurity preventing cultivation and access by aid agencies. Through these distributions, over 45,000 food insecure Didinga internally displaced persons (IDPs) and local Dinka inhabitants were reached.
2. MONITORING AND ASSESSMENTS
Equatoria
During a meeting that took place between HAC, WFP, and its partner NGOs, WFP announced that food distributions would end in December and recommence in April next year as recommended in the OLS report.
While monitoring distributions, WFP staff noted that distribution centres serving large numbers of beneficiaries were problematic. They noted that ration cards were at times not used and that local relief committees sometimes received little supervision and were found to be customising the beneficiary list and including non-registered individuals in WFP distributions. WFP have decided to utilize the Letters of Agreement signed with the NGOs to ensure use of appropriate food distribution procedures and penalise breaches during the next IDP distribution schedule, beginning in April 2000.
Transitional Zone
South Darfur: A food gap reported by local media was found to have affected south Darfur because of pest attack on crops, delayed rainfalls and poor crop management techniques. These were found to be in line with observations made in the 1999 OLS assessment report.
A proposal has been submitted for the initiation of an emergency school feeding programme in the Khor Omar IDP camp. The programme will cater for 230 primary school children, 70 % of whom will be IDPs.
Unity State
Preparations are ongoing in Bentiu for registration of IDPs in the New Year. Registration materials such as forms and ration cards are being sent to the area. Training of field staff in registration techniques is to begin next week.
Bahr el Ghazal
Preliminary information from a recent Emergency Response Team mission to Thiek Thou (Gogrial County), Bahr el Ghazal points to the presence of around 10,091 IDPs or returnees having arrived in Toch payam since September 1999. This figure is somewhat lower than figures earlier estimated by WFP. WFP completed a food distribution to the IDPs/returnees in Thiek Thou in early December 1999. A multi-agency response is currently being planned to meet the humanitarian needs in Thiek Thou.
3. SECURITY
WFP security trainers arrived from during week to train Sudan staff on security issues. The workshops informed staff on the UN security management system, office and residence security, fire safety, detention situations, stress in emergency, driving safety, abuse of power, first aid and emergency preparedness and survival mechanisms. All staff are to be targeted. The workshops are expected to continue throughout the next reporting period.
The security situation is calm in Upper Nile. The WFP security Officer arrived in Malakal during the week. He will be conducting a security assessment along the Malakal Fanjak - Tonga corridor.
Due to fighting in the Waat area (Bieh State), Jonglei, the following locations were declared to be "no-go" areas, namely, Waat, Walgak, Kakuny, Tangyang, Pieri and Motot, though there were no WFP staff in these locations at the time. Similarly, a number of locations in Upper Nile were declared "no-go" areas during the reporting period due to insecurity though no WFP teams were in these areas at the time. During the reporting period, Tajiel and Tharagana in Leech State, Upper Nile were declared "no-go" and Boaw, Koch, Thornyor, Biem, Padit and Nimnin in the same state were placed on security level "tense." Haat in Phou State, Jonglei was also placed on security level "tense" during the reporting period.
OLS gave the green light for humanitarian agencies to access Natinga (Kapoeta County), Eastern Equatoria on 27 December. However, on this same date the road between Natinga and New Cush remained closed to OLS agencies.
4. LOGISTICS
Air Operations
During the reporting period, WFP delivered 601 MT of mixed commodities by air from north sector locations, an increase of 200% over the previous week. The increase was due to the resumption of normal WFP air deliveries, particularly commercial airlifts.
Food was airdropped in Ajeip (126 MT), Aweil (162 MT), Banya (18 MT), Kuleny (2 MT) and Panthou (72 MT). A new aircraft that has been leased by WFP to deliver food to Wau airlifted 71 MT during the week. Commercial air freights from Khartoum to Juba continued over the reporting period delivering 111 MT of food for distribution in the area.
During the reporting period, three C-130 Hercules and two Buffalo aircraft continued to deliver food from Lokichoggio, and one C-130 aircraft operated out of Khartoum/El Obeid. No food deliveries were made from Lokichoggio on 25 and 26th December.
Barge Operations
Barge operations were to resume during this month with the Juba 14 convoy, however, security clearances have not been fully obtained.
Road Operations
During the reporting period, food continued to be delivered from Kosti through El Obeid and Bentiu for prepositioning in Rubkona. WFP also delivered 176 MT of cereals from Kosti to Um Ruwaba for distribution by SCF-US
On 23 December, WFP erected three additional semi-permanent storage units with a combined capacity of 1,200 MT at the new, WFP storage and transit site in Koboko. By mid-January, WFP estimates that it will have six semi-permanent storage units in Koboko with a total capacity of 2,400 MT. This will allow WFP to store all food destined for the Koboko road corridor in one location, namely Koboko, rather than the current set-up where the food is divided up between storage sites in Mombasa (Kenya) and Tororo and Kampala in Uganda. After January, WFP would therefore close its "old" warehouse site rented from the Ugandan Red Cross, and only use the new storage and transit site located two kilometres from the WFP offices.
6. MANAGEMENT
Over 25 WFP field staff working in the Upper Nile and Jonglei regions (Southern Sector) participated in a two-day programme and logistics review and planning workshop in Lokichoggio from 19-20 December 1999. Topics covered include post-distribution monitoring formats to be used in 2000, population assessment techniques, gender issues in food distribution, WFP's strategy for 2000, food-for-work and participatory rapid appraisal techniques.
7. OTHER ISSUES
Indigenous Wild Food Plants
WFP, in conjunction with USAID and CRS, is planning a series of workshops in 2000 to train around 450 NGO field staff, counterparts and local populations on "indigenous plant foods, their use and potential". Workshops are planned for Twic, Rumbek and Gogrial counties (Bahr el Ghazal) in January, in Aweil East and West and Wau counties (Bahr el Ghazal) in February and in other areas such as Bor County, Jonglei and Upper Nile in later months. The workshops aim to inform the participants about key, existing resource materials on this topic, and impart practical tools to collect information on wild food plants, use existing baseline information and identify links with their humanitarian assistance programmes. The workshops will have a strong participatory focus with practical data collection exercises, brainstorming and feed-back to the local communities. The workshops will concentrate on the wild foods specific to the particular location where the workshop is being held. The series of workshops will later be reviewed to draw out possible lessons for policy-making.
Visitors
From 17-20 December, the WFP Southern Sector OLS Reports and Public Information Officer accompanied a Reuters cameraman to South Sudan. The trip included visits to WFP activities in Kiriel (Leech State), Upper Nile, Kuleny (Twic County), Bahr el Ghazal and Mangar Angui/Wargeng (Aweil East County, Bahr el Ghazal). WFP's Annual Needs Assessment exercise for 2000 recognised Aweil East County and Leech State as two areas of high food insecurity in the coming year. The visits were an opportunity to document the improved food security situation in parts of Bahr el Ghazal, whilst at the same time highlighting the pockets of high food insecurity that remain. In Kiriel, the WFP/Reuters team interviewed Nuer and Dinka IDPs who had received WFP food in recent "hit and run" distributions in the area. In Kuleny, the team interviewed local community leaders to gain a better understanding of how the food security situation in the area has improved following WFP food distributions during the agricultural seasons of 1999. Such distributions give local populations additional energy during the planting and cultivation period which in turn boosts local agricultural yields. In Mangar Angui, the local community was interviewed to gauge how insecurity linked to militia raids following Government of Sudan trains in the area have affected the local food security situation and provision of WFP food. The footage from the trip was edited and later disseminated to the Reuters, Associated Press, CNN and BBC TV networks in Nairobi.
The WFP Sudan Bulletin is available on the WFP Website at http://www.wfp.org. For further information on WFP operations in Sudan, please contact the WFP Africa Bureau - Mr Ismat Fahmi, Programme Coordinator for Sudan: email Ismat.Fahmi@WFP.org. telephone 39 06 6513 2338; or Ms. Leslie Elliott, Reports Officer, e-mail: Jouko.Ala-Outinen@WFP.org. telephone 39 06 6513 2871. The address of WFP is Via Cesare Giulio Viola 68, Parco dei Medici, 00148 Rome, Italy.
©: 1999, World Food Programme. All rights reserved.