Crisis Point: Famine in Sudan
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Like many adults in southern Sudan, Majok does not know her exact age.
What Majok does know with painful certainty, however, is that her husband was killed when militia armed by the Sudan government attacked her village. She realizes that her infant daughter is near starvation and can only survive if Majok walks five miles every day to a special feeding center where aid workers feed her daughter five cups of fortified milk each day.
Majok herself survives by eating boiled leaves each evening. She knows that her struggle against famine will continue for another year, because Majok has no seeds to plant in order to grow her own food.
Majok's simple story reveals much about the tragedy now unfolding in Sudan, geographically Africa's largest country. Majok and her baby are two of the 2.6 million Sudanese at risk of famine, according to estimates by the United Nations. The civil war that killed Majok's husband is a major cause of the current food shortage. The lack of seeds that prevents Majok and many other Sudanese from farming means that many people will probably remain in famine's grip until late 1999, relying on sustained food aid for their survival.
It is important to understand that Sudan's famine is largely man-made. Nearly 15 years of civil war and harsh Sudanese government policies have left nearly 4 million Sudanese internally displaced from their homes: more population displacement than in any other country on earth. Tens of thousands of families have lost their houses, their farms, and the large cattle herds that usually sustain them in times of food shortages. Two years of drought have aggravated the people's misery, pushing millions of Sudanese to the brink of severe malnutrition or starvation.
USCR has long devoted special attention to the plight of Sudan and its people, and we have already conducted three site visits to the country this year. Southern Sudan, where violence and famine are worst, requires some 38,000 tons of food relief before November, plus 33,000 additional tons before April 1999.
The UN and more than 30 international relief agencies are mounting what UN officials describe as the "largest humanitarian air-drop in history." Large cargo planes operate daily from dawn until dusk air-dropping sacks of sorghum, corn, and other grains to feed isolated populations in southern Sudan.
Rain storms have arrived too late for good crop yields, but the rains unfortunately have hit in time to turn southern Sudan's dirt roads into mud, impeding relief efforts. The massive airlift of food is expensive; one flight to deliver 16 tons of grain costs up to $28,000.
The United States and other world leaders have roundly criticized the Sudan government over the years for its human rights abuses and terrorist activities. The Sudanese government has a long history of blocking relief efforts - it prohibited most aid deliveries to the heart of the famine zone for two months earlier this year - but Sudanese officials are currently cooperating with the aid effort, at least temporarily.
Relief organizations fear that their logistically difficult food deliveries are too late to save thousands of lives. But they hope that the aid-drops at more than 70 remote locations are occurring early enough to save tens of thousands of others. Famine took the lives of up to 250,000 southern Sudanese ten years ago because the international community largely ignored it.
This time, Majok hopes that international donors will see fit to provide the help that she and her baby daughter desperately need to live.
-Jeff Drumtra is Africa Policy Analyst for USCR.
