U.S. and European Media

December 27, 2022

New York Times: Malnutrition Up in Darfur Despite Aid. Child malnutrition rates have increased sharply in Darfur, even though it is home to the world’s largest aid operation, according to a new United Nations report. The report showed that 16.1 percent of children affected by the conflict in Darfur, a vast, turbulent region in western Sudan, are acutely malnourished, compared with 12.9 percent last year. For the first time since 2004, the malnutrition rate, a gauge of the population’s overall distress, has crossed what United Nations officials consider to be the emergency threshold. Just as important, the increase has occurred despite the efforts of more than 13,000 relief workers in Darfur, who work for 13 United Nations agencies and some 80 private aid groups, and draw from an annual aid budget of about a billion dollars. Aid officials said they were concerned that even with all these resources, the condition of the people in Darfur seemed to be getting worse.  “This is a big deal,” said Jean Rigal, the head of a branch of Doctors Without Borders in Sudan. “The system is not working as expected.” The report seems to confirm what aid officials in Darfur have been saying for much of the past year: that the increasingly chaotic security situation, both inside the enormous camps of displaced people and in the desiccated rural areas that are very difficult to reach even in the best of times, has gotten to the point that it is hampering the delivery of much needed emergency food. To counter this, the United Nations and the African Union are trying to send in an expanded, joint peacekeeping force. But that deployment has been delayed by bureaucratic battles with the Sudanese government and the reluctance of developed countries to supply high-tech equipment, like helicopters. As a result, people in Darfur are beginning to lose hope, and that may be another factor taking a toll on their health, several aid officials said.

Washington Post: Six French Citizens Found Guilty in Chad. A court in Chad on Wednesday sentenced six French charity workers to eight years of hard labor each on charges of trying to kidnap 103 African children. The conviction and sentencing were handed down on the fourth day of the trial of workers from the charity Zoe's Ark, who were accused of fraud and kidnapping for attempting to fly the children to France for adoption in Europe. The defendants argued that they were trying to find homes for orphans from the war-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan, which borders Chad, and were duped by local intermediaries about the family status of individual children. Investigations showed that most of the youngsters, who ranged in age from 1 to 10 years old, were Chadians who lived with at least one parent or other relative. A French Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday night that France will attempt to have the six charity workers transferred to France to serve their sentences, although France no longer permits hard labor.

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