Statement of Catherine A. Bertini Executive Director of the World Food Program
to the
Committee on International Relations House of Representatives
THE CRISIS IN SUDAN
Subcommittee on Africa Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights
Presented July 29, 1998 Washington, DC, USA
Mr. Chairman, I will focus my remarks today on Sudan. We will, with your permission, submit additional written information to the Committee on World Food Program activities in northern Uganda.
Two weeks ago, WFP staff began distributing 250 tons of food air dropped for 30,000 people in the Western Upper Nile region. We never finished. Instead our staff members fled on foot for 18 hours, first through dense brush and then chest deep in swamps infested with mosquitoes. Armed militias pursued and fired on them, along with the poor Sudanese families who had gathered to obtain badly needed food. Despite the ceasefire, there is still significant danger for the dedicated people in Operation Lifeline Sudan and all the NGOs who are working to reach the hungry of Sudan.
Ten years ago, the World Food Program gave up and pulled out of southern Sudan altogether after a fleet of our trucks was attacked and hijacked -- the final straw in a series of security incidents. The donor community -- including the United States -- pressed us to return to the field and we did just that creating Operation Lifeline Sudan with our partner UNICEF. Catholic Relief Services, MSF, Oxfam and World Vision joined the effort.
For nearly a decade, UNICEF, the World Food Program and our NGO partners -- have been delivering tens of thousands of tons of food to the victims of civil war in Sudan through Operation Lifeline Sudan. Since 1992 we have delivered more than 360,000 tons of food to 4.7 million victims of war and drought.
It has never been easy. We have, of course, had casualties. This is increasingly an ugly part of our daily work -- all told, in Sudan, Uganda, Angola and other trouble spots, WFP has lost 14 staff in a little more than a year and a half. A staff member was murdered just last week in Burundi. Mr. Chairman, I would be grateful if we could enter into the Record the names of all these dedicated individuals who have sacrificed their lives.
WFP has not been alone in this sacrifice -- the United Nations announced on Monday that more civilians than soldiers had been killed in UN missions around the world. The dangers of providing humanitarian aid continue to grow.
How We Reached the Crisis Stage
As we meet, 50 people a day are dying in and around Wau in southern Sudan. Other feeding centers are reporting an alarming rise in deaths as people struggle on foot from the countryside, many already to weak to save. The strong arrived earlier. Today we are seeing the walking dead. The death toll so far in the region is at least in the tens of thousands. We can turn on our television sets and watch almost live coverage of this horrible pain. Families short of food have stopped feeding the old, the infirm, and the weaker of their children.
WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization predicted a major food emergency as far back as last September, though not of the scope that intensified fighting and drought has now brought us today. Other agencies and NGOs were also sounding the alarm.
In 1994 aid agencies faced a similar crisis and we managed to reach victims sooner and more effectively. We had more access to areas then so we could predict the extent of the damage being done by a deadly mix of war and drought. This year that was not the case. Widespread fighting and the ban on relief flights in February and March hurt us very badly both on deliveries and on information about the nutritional state of the people. Without access, we could not pinpoint or assess needs as well as in 1994.
Once we had access, we sounded the alarm again -- only more strongly. Our Special Alert in May told donors, "Intensified civil conflict since January, particularly in Bahr El Ghazal, has resulted in fresh waves of population displacement....with starvation-related deaths. In Bahr El Ghazal alone 350,000 people are at risk of starvation...". We have since raised our estimate of needs from roughly 82,500 tons to 129,000 tons Our total target population is now 2.6 million, including 1.2 million in rebel held areas. Most of the tonnage increase is in needing to provide larger rations since crops have failed from drought and that will have a devastating impact during the hunger gap that will last through October. The prospects for the current harvest were made far worse when so many farmers were unable to tend to their fields earlier in the year because of the fighting.
The Harsh Reality of Sudan
How have we dealt with the unfolding crisis this summer? Before describing some of our efforts to you, it is important to highlight a few basic facts that will give the Committee some perspective on the realities of Sudan.
-- in all of southern Sudan there are 6 kilometers of good paved roads, six kilometers -- less than the distance from this hearing room to Arlington, Virginia
-- on the other hand, hundreds of kilometers of unpaved roads are littered with pot holes and mines planted by both sides in the conflict. Airstrips and rail lines have suffered a similar fate.
-- the unpaved roads flood badly in the rainy season -- mudslides, broken bridges and washed out roads block or severely delay transport. Airstrips flood and our relief pilots leaving from Lokichoggio are never sure they can land food until they are over the airstrips themselves.
-- barges are sitting ducks for militias on both sides and other armed groups, like the Popular Defense Force who operate as bands of armed thugs. The current drought has made several rivers useless for barge transport.
-- repairs to rail lines, roads and bridges either support one warring party or another, and they are quickly undone. We repair again, they bomb again.
All of our rail, barge and air operations are subject to approval by the warring parties -- the Government of Sudan and the SPLA. For surface transport we have the added burden of armed splinter groups who raid shipments. Sometimes we are not even aware of their existence until we have tried to move food. Clearance delays because of fighting have had a devastating impact. It took almost two months to clear a barge that left Juba last week carrying 2100 metric tons -- more than a fifth of the monthly needs in the south.
In previous crises in southern Sudan, WFP relied heavily on a network of relatively large logistics bases. They contained living quarters for ground staff and food monitors, tractors and trailers, other vehicles, communications. All of these bases have been looted and destroyed in the last four years. This forces WFP to fly in personnel and equipment each time an intervention is planned and to leave immediately after it is executed -- and that adds immeasurably to the cost, logistical complexity and security risk of our operations.
A Lack of Resources
Despite the obstacles and the danger, the humanitarian agencies in Operation Lifeline Sudan -- UNICEF and the World Food Program -- and the NGOs in Sudan have stuck to the task. And they have done a far better job of feeding the victims of this war than the politicians have done in resolving it. NGOs have worked very hard on the nutritional and medical disaster created by this war -- Catholic Relief Services, Norwegian People's Aid, MSF. Oxfam, World Vision, the Irish NGOs Goal and Concern and the Lutheran World Federation.
But all of us must struggle with more than just the danger and the physical environment of Sudan. We desperately need more resources -- money, food, medicine. Today -- despite the horrible images in the media -- we have only 41 percent of our target.
The response we have had from some donors -- especially the United States -- is encouraging. But we urgently need corn soya blend, fortified dried skim milk, and high protein biscuits. We have been assured that the Administration will address these needs on a priority basis and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them. We have pressing needs for the current Emergency Operation and our Special Operations for Logistics. All told, we are asking donors for $165 million to cover food and transport and logistical improvements until next April. The cost of our operation in this peak period is actually about one milllion dollars a day.
What we are seeing now in our newspapers and on our televisions will not fade away easily; we are worried about food supplies for a significant time to come and we are likely to have to keep up deliveries at current rates for more than a year.
With the lack of alternatives to air supply of food, this will be a very expensive proposition until we can ship more by road, rail and barge. Each C130 airdrop of food costs an average of $15,500 and delivers 16 metric tons of food -- enough to feed 40,000 people for a day. An Ilyushin can drop twice the amount -- 30 tons for 80,000 people -- at a cost of $29,700.
We hope that a portion of the recently announced donation of 2.5 million metric tons of U.S. wheat will be given to WFP to help us cope with this massive need. We applaud the United States for this act of generosity which can make so much of a difference in coping with food crises, not only in Sudan, but all over the globe.
The Issue of Access
The issue of access has always been the heart of the problem for Operation Lifeline Sudan and the NGOs. Could we have done more to pressure the Government in Khartoum for greater access? There have been dozens of press releases, media briefings, letters of appeal, meetings and written and oral complaints made by WFP, UNICEF and the NGOs.
Would it have been better to turn up the heat earlier, pressing Governments to take a course of direct confrontation? That's not clear and it is not a decision that we the humanitarian agencies are charged to make. The situation in southern Sudan was never any secret. And I know that pressure has already been applied by a few Governments, including the United States, on all parties in the conflict. Clearly the pressure has not been enough.
Are Governments prepared to go beyond what they have done so far? If we fly outside the OLS agreement, will the donors insure us? No one else would. Would they violate Sudanese sovereignty and provide military aircraft? Is the international community prepared to intervene militarily to land food or secure humanitarian corridors? There have been no offers thus far. The experience in the Great Lakes crisis two years ago would not hold out much suggestion of military aid.
Where We are Today
Picking villains here will not feed anyone. Today we have more cooperation from the Government and the SPLA on access. We need to make the most of it to end this parade of near dead converging on the feeding camps.
The pace of air food deliveries has already skyrocketed. In January at the height of the fighting we had permission to fly only one aircraft, and we were barely able to deliver 150 metric tons by air out of Lokichoggio. Beginning in April, the Sudanese Government progressively granted WFP approval to operate more large aircraft in the south. By the end of April we were delivering 2,300 tons a month, in May nearly 4,000 tons, in June 6,400 and in July we will reach 10,000 tons. In August we should reach our target pace of 15,000 mt a month to war affected zones throughout Sudan -- 10000 to the south and 5000 to the north -- to feed 2.6 million people.
We are now delivering at a rate six times greater than in 1997 when we delivered roughly 32,000 tons for the year. This Monday we delivered 400 tons. Thirteen cargo aircraft will fly to 89 locations and OLS will double the number of feeding centers to thirty eight and the number of food monitors to 100. In August, we will deliver more than 12,000 tons by air from Lokichoggio, Nairobi, Khartoum and El Obeid. In addition, we will move 2,000 tons by barge, 2,000 by truck from the north and 1,200 from the south. We cannot now deliver by rail due to the condition of the tracks in many locations. Deliveries should reach 17,200 tons for the month.
Working with our partners in UNICEF and Save the Children, MSF, the Red Crescent and other NGOs we are speeding up the admission of children to special centers and beginning wet feeding for adults who have arrived at camps too weak to cook the food on hand. Additional medicines, therapeutic and supplementary foods, and pumps for water are coming in to the region.
The ceasefire creates some opportunities. We applaud it, but it is far from a cure all. While we are naturally leery of investing in road, bridge and rail repairs given past experience, that is part of our new Special Operations appeal for $11.3 million and assistance in kind. This appeal would also cover a fleet of 40 trucks, allowing us to insure a consistent supply of vehicles.
The appeal would also cover two additional aircraft giving us added capacity in case the ceasefire does not hold or there are other obstacles to more barge and land transport. All this should help reduce some of the exorbitant costs we are facing and cut insurance rates.
Even after food is delivered, we are having a hard time controlling it. Put simply, a man with a gun is always well fed -- women and children, the ill and the elderly do not fare as well. Our monitors actually watch the food distribution, but once it takes place we lose control and we are negotiating now with the SPLA to put an end to the forced taxation in food they have exerted from beneficiaries. We are doubling the number of food monitors as we continue to expand distribution, but we need the cooperation of the SPLA to end this abuse. To be fair, given the number of splinter groups and weak central authority among the rebels, it is not clear just how much control they can deliver in response to our complaints.
Where Will We be Tomorrow?
Mr. Chairman, this famine is the creation of politics. The solution to it must be political. So many years after the start of this bloodshed, we all know there will be no quick fixes or easy solutions, but it is time that the international community began to give the pain of southern Sudan the priority it so deeply deserves. Without strong commitment by all parties, there will never be a lasting solution to this crisis. Fifteen years of fighting have demonstrated that and made cynics out of all who work in the harsh reality of Sudan.
As a first step, we need this ceasefire to last more than three months and to cover all of southern Sudan. The Government of Sudan should fulfil its promise to the Secretary-General on access to the SPLA held areas in the Nuba Mountains and complete and impartial investigation of the murders of WFP and Red Crescent staff there. The SPLA must act to end the so-called tax on food given to the needy and other forces must end the pillaging. We are not in the business of feeding soldiers who are already well fed.
Political commitment can end this war. Righteous indignation will not. We need the continued support of the United States, and the generosity of the American people who have always been first in coming to our aid. We welcome the initiatives already being discussed here in the Congress to take a more active role in brokering peace.
Famines are avoidable. I can remember testifying in the Congress in 1992 about an impending drought in southern Africa that threatened the lives of 15 million people. Congressmen Hall and Emerson called a hearing early to draw attention to what could have been the largest famine in history. With the help of USAID, USDA, and other donors the World Food Programme mobilized food quickly in a relief operation that is still the largest in UN history. And at the same time we helped forge the first cooperative links between South Africa and its neighbors. Ironically, after what was a clear triumph, there was only one article in any newspaper of note -- the Christian Science Monitor. We beat a famine and no one seemed to know about.
We can beat this famine too. But ending this famine means ending this war - and that is the work of politicians. I urge the Congress and the Administration to do all they can -- not to find villains or heroes, but to help broker a lasting peace.
A hungry Sudanese mother too weak to nurse her dying baby does not care who is at fault. She just wants it all to end.
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Mr. Chairman, please let me express my gratitude to you for holding this hearing and to all those who are here to testify to the tragedy that has unfolded in southern Sudan.
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