Hunger stalks Darfur
Aid agencies are struggling to deliver supplies to the remote Sam Oundja camp.
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Residents of conflict-ridden Darfur are struggling to survive. But for refugees from Darfur who have fled to the Central African Republic, conditions are worse than the ones they left behind.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons travelled to the Sam Oundja refugee camp and came face to face with human misery.
Everyone in the Sam Ouandja camp tells the same story about bombs being dropped from Sudanese military aircraft. The targets may have been anti-government groups but the people were under fire and they ran for their lives.
Sadia Adam Abakar, a refugee, said: “I had to come here on foot. I brought my six children and all our belongings it took two weeks. We didn’t rest and we couldn’t even light a fire at night in case the military saw and bombed us again.
While these refugees have escaped genocide in Darfur, they now face a serious challenge – hunger. The remote location of this camp makes the delivery of aid supplies close to impossible.
The roads are dirt tracks and the rainy season is approaching and soon they’ll be impassable. This sprawling refugee camp is in one of the most remote places on earth.
Marcus Prior of the World Food Programme (WFP) said: “This is as tough as it gets for the World Food Programme, we’re effectively at the end of the line.
“We’re in a landlocked country in the heart of Africa, with virtually no infrastructure.”
Although more emergency food supplies will be arriving by road, life is merely about survival for these people and trying to bring some normality to this existence.