KHARTOUM

(

24 Apr

.) -

About 105,000 people newly displaced by violence in North Darfur since February 2014 have returned to their areas of origin by 21 April 2014.andnbsp;Yet in many places in Darfur people remain displaced, many of them lacking adequate shelter, food and water.

As of 21 April 2014, an estimated 224,000 people remain displaced across the Darfur region since they had to flee attacks on their villages in North and South Darfur since February this year. Some 273,000 people who were displaced in Darfur since February 2014 received some form of humanitarian assistance, with some 67,000 people still to be assisted, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan reported in its latest weekly bulletin.

The lack of assistance for these people is a result of access and logistical problems as well as verification issues related to the number of the newly displaced at the camps and transit sites, as well as the number of returns to places of origin, OCHA explained.

Returns

According to HAC, local authorities and aid agencies, an estimated 105,000 newly displaced in North Darfur have returned to their areas of origin over the past week.

The returns were largely reported in El Taweisha town, where some 38,000 people, or 95 percent of the people who fled, have returned from a number of locations in El Taweisha locality. Many of the returnees, however, are in need of assistance to rebuild their lives as a significant number of them lost their homes, property and livestock. They also need to prepare for cultivation before the rainy season sets in, in a few weeks’ time.

Queues for water

A recent Common Humanitarian Fund (CHF) monitoring mission to El Salam and Kalma camps near Nyala, which was accompanied by the Environmental Adviser for UN team in Sudan, found that the water supply and infrastructure is not sufficient to meet the needs of many people who arrived in the camp over the past few weeks.

There are large queues for water in the two camps. The camp residents speak of receiving only two jerry cans (about 30 litres) of water per an average family of five per day, which is below the minimum requirement of 15 litres per person, according to Sphere standards.

In addition, newly displaced said that while they received plastic sheeting for emergency shelter and non-food relief supplies, they are yet to receive any wooden poles or frames to erect the shelters.

File photo: Women fetching water in Abu Shouk camp for the displaced in North Darfur (Albert Gonzalez Farran/Unamid)

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