Food
is at the heart of the tragedy in Darfur, western
Sudan.
Practical
Action's Intermediate Technology Development Group
for Sudan explains the background of the
Darfur conflict:
"The
Darfur region is a densely populated part of Sudan
and is characterized by the multi-ethnicity and
contrasting lifestyles of its inhabitants. The people
of Darfur are mostly farmers and animal herders.
They make their living in very different ways, but
all must share the same scarce natural resources
in order to survive.
Over
the years, Sudan's governments have given little
or no attention to actual and potential problems
that have faced the region. As a consequence basic
services and infrastructure are lacking and Darfur
has not progressed beyond its annual balancing act
of getting enough rainfall, enough food and enough
trade to fend off disaster. This balancing act doesn't
always work out and conflicts in Darfur are historically
conflicts over natural resources when there is just
not enough to go round.
During
the terrible droughts of the 1980s, nomads of mostly
Arab origin faced with dried out natural pastures
started to take their herds into the farms of the
resident farmers. They allowed their herds to graze
the farmers crops and the farmers, suffering just
as much from the drought, defended their land and
their crops. Animal herders and farmers clashed,
sometimes different groups of herders also fought
each other for water or pasture land. Fighting between
different groups has led to tribal quarrels and
local skirmishes have escalated in to larger tribal
conflicts."
Traditional
Diet
International
Committee of the Red Cross reports:
"The
diet in average years was varied and consisted mainly
of staple foods (millet, sorghum) and vegetables
such as okra, onion (basal) and dried tomatoes (salsal).
Composition diet in AVERAGE year:
Sorghum/millet 25-45%; Salt 5%; Melon/sesame
seeds 5-10%;
Oil 7-10%; Beans 7%; Wild foods 0-15%; Vegetables
10-40%; Sugar 5-10%; Meat/milk 5-15%; Groundnuts
5-10%
In each village, the community stated that its current
food intake was substantially lower than before.
On average the villagers reported that their current
food intake was reduced to 35–45% of what
it had been in normal years. This information was
consistent from village to village, yet in no case
did the team find marasmic individuals. No information
was available on the nutritional status of the assessed
villagers prior to the conflict. The team International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Food Needs Assessment
Darfur page 13 out of 16 suspects that, to a certain
extent, this discrepancy might be due to an under-estimation
of actual intake. Many assessed communities stressed
the lack of oil in their diet.
Men have privileged access to food and are likely
to have more cereals in their diet than women. These
are sometimes mixed with wild food (for instance
koreib/abu sabe). If protein sources such as meat
are available to the household, the men will receive
the lion's share if not all. The nutritional quality
of the food was hard to measure during the assessment,
but wild foods such as mugheit are risky since they
are toxic if insufficient water is used in its preparation.
In addition, some wild foods require long preparation
(separation of grain from grass, boiling, extensive
washing, underground fermentation, etc).
Rural
residents said that they had all reduced their daily
food consumption from a normal three meals to one-to-two.
Most had been doing this since the start of the
conflict a year ago. Consumption of wild foods is
not unusual and some communities reported a baseline
intake of 5–15% of their diet in normal years.
However, the majority of villagers are now getting
35–85% of their food intake in the form of
wild foods. Communities that received relief assistance
topped up their diets with wild foods, since most
of the relief was insufficient in quantity.
Most
of the resident rural communities that had not received
relief were getting more than 50% of their total
food intake from wild foods. The growth of some
wild foods in more northern areas of Darfur was
also affected by drought. By means of household
visits, cross-sectional walks through villages and
the discrepancy between men's and women's accounts
of their current diets, the team concluded that
men have priority when it comes to the quantity
and quality of food (see section on nutrition).
Women take enormous physical risks to find and gather
wild food, firewood and grass.
Often left with no other option, women search for
wild foods in surrounding areas and regularly have
to spend many hours to collect enough for one meal.
One community reported that sometimes the women
stayed out for two to three days and would return
only once they had gathered enough wild food. Women
also risk physical harm when going to the markets
or fetching water. It was generally felt that whole
communities took many risks in order to obtain food,
whether they were carrying out agricultural activities
in areas with a history of incidents, collecting
wild food, grass and firewood or carrying out small-scale
trade at the marketplace.
In
most communities the traditionally strong charity
system has collapsed, although people still share
as much as they can. This sharing ranges from vegetables
to cooking utensils and jerrycans for fetching water."
An
alternative cash crop: Releasing the potential of
Karkadeh in Darfur
Practical
Action reports
on their attempts to diversify Darfur's agriculture:
Because of the natural environmental
limits to farming on the outskirts of the Sahara,
most farms produce the same crops. In the markets
of Darfur, farmers are finding that you can have
too much of a good thing. Competition is driving
down prices, and as a result, incomes are also dropping.
One way of breaking the cycle is to diversify.
Karkadeh bush, tea leaves and "karkade"
herbal drink.
Karkadeh,
also known as Hibiscus sabdariffa, is a colourful
plant with a lot of potential for Darfur's farmers.
In Sudan it is grown in small quantities and used
to make tea and also karkade, a fizzy cold drink.
But in the bigger picture Hibiscus sabdariffa forms
the base of almost all herbal teas, and the Sudanese
'wild-grown' variety is highly favoured by international
tea manufacturers for its bright, orange-red colour
and tart, acidic taste, which surpass those of cultivated
crops grown in countries like China and Thailand.
Practical
Action Sudan has worked in Darfur for 15
years.
Its
programmes aim to increase security for a people
often faced by drought and tribal clashes. Now,
with insecurity escalating, what can be done to
secure a peaceful and sustainable future?
Water
Water is a critical resource in Darfur. It's therefore
one of the major resources that people fight over.
Providing more water at carefully selected sites
will help to reduce conflict over water.
Pasture land Limited natural pastures also cause
conflict. One solution is reclaiming more pasture
land by building dams to enhance flooding over wide
areas. This will increase the size and fertility
of pasture lands. Pastures can also be improved
by introducing fodders into the area and spreading
selected seeds that produce palatable, highly nutritious
plants. This will ensure availability of more fodder
for grazing animals.
Crop invasions
All
of the conflict between animal herders and farmers
is due to the invasions of animals into farms before
the crops are harvested. One of the suggested solutions
by mediators, including Government representatives,
is to specify a date by which farmers should harvest
their crops. This is not a straightforward solution,
but ITDGPractical Action is working to help farmers
harvest their crops early by providing early maturing
varieties of seeds and introducing simple, efficient
and affordable harvesting machinery.
Transport
People escaping the fighting have faced a severe
transport shortage. Their camels and horses have
been looted leaving most to walk long distances
to safety. Some have been able to ride on donkeys,
but even donkeys are scarce. Older people unable
to make the journey on foot have been left to face
their destiny. The lucky ones get access to wheelbarrows.
ITDGPractical Action is currently working to provide
intermediate means of transport such as donkey carts
and wheelbarrows, and to improve donkey packs so
that these remaining animals can carry more supplies.
Housing
Fighting has led to the burning of hundreds of villages.
Rebuilding them requires raw materials, but North
Darfur has poor vegetation and is known for its
dryness at the best of times. Wood and straw, the
common building materials, are either unavailable
or very scarce. There is a need to introduce and
promote new ways of building homes that require
little or no wood and straw, such as using clay.
ITDGPractical Action is currently investigating
this issue.
Agriculture
Efforts
are being made to asses and respond to people's
needs with regard to the next agricultural season.
If farming inputs such as tools and seeds are not
secured by the end of June at the latest, there
is a high risk that the season will fail and there
will be no harvest. This is a critical issue that
could broaden the scope of the disaster. Without
the harvest, food relief will be needed for the
next 18 months until the next harvest, assuming
it is successful next year. ITDGPractical Action
is building and digging terraces in time for the
rains to catch and utilize even a scare rainfall
and encourage crop growth.
Pasture
land
Limited
natural pastures also cause conflict. One solution
is reclaiming more pasture land by building dams
to enhance flooding over wide areas. This will increase
the size and fertility of pasture lands. Pastures
can also be improved by introducing fodders into
the area and spreading selected seeds that produce
palatable, highly nutritious plants. This will ensure
availability of more fodder for grazing animals.
Cultural
change
People
in Darfur are currently singing traditional war
songs that are very much motivating people to fight.
In such songs, the perfect man is one who can kill
many people unaided. To challenge this stereotype,
new songs and plays are being developed that portray
a good man as a man of wisdom, who uses his mind
and not his muscles, and solves other people's problems,
including disputes. These songs and plays encourage
peace rather than fighting.
Capacity building
The current situation has meant that a lot of local
communities are hosting displaced people forced
to leave their own homes. The local communities
are using whatever resources they have and sharing
them with the displaced who come in to their areas.
This has had a tremendous impact on relieving the
suffering of these people. ITDGPractical Action
is building on this experience and has developed
a programme to build Community Based Organizations
that are better able to manage disaster and have
the capacity to host displaced people who have fled
their own homes.
ITDGPractical
Action is organizing a lot of training in El Fashir
town for representatives from the local communities.
The training is designed to capacity-build people,
giving them more authority over projects in their
area and less dependence on ITDGPractical Action
staff. This strategy has been forced into place
by the area's insecurity as ITDGPractical Action
staff may have to be evacuated. It is an exercise
in emergency exit strategies that will be a learning
process for all involved. On the positive side,
if the methodology proves successful, it will lead
to greater emergency preparedness by ITDGPractical
Action in the future.
Providing agricultural equipment
Repatriating displaced people and ensuring their
security
Providing improved seeds, particularly early maturing
varieties
Rehabilitating sentinel sites, water stations and
health centres so that farmers feel secure
Providing adequate supplies before the rainy season
to avoid logistics difficulties during the rains
Expanding cultivated areas which are easy to access
to compensate for inaccessible areas in the north
Developing irrigation technology, cultivation techniques
and early maturing seeds to increase productivity
Links
Practical
Action Sudan
International
Crisis Group's Darfur Campaign
Eyes
on Darfur
US
Holocaust Museum & Google Earth project
The United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum has joined with Google in an unprecedented
online mapping initiative. Crisis in Darfur enables
more than 200 million Google Earth users worldwide
to visualize and better understand the genocide
currently unfolding in Darfur, Sudan. The Museum
has assembled content photographs, data, and eyewitness
testimony from a number of sources that are brought
together for the first time in Google Earth.
BBC:
full coverage, multiple stories, picture galleries
World
Food Program: Darfur
Darfur:
a genocide we can stop
Darfur
Conflict: a history
Short
Facts and History of Darfur
Olympic
Dream for Darfur campaign
The
Secret Genocide Archive By NICHOLAS
D. KRISTOF 23rd February, 2005. New York Times
Adopt
a Peace-Keeper in Sudan
Save
Darfur Shop
Photo exhibit about herders in Northern Sudan
Dying
in Darfur: educational role-playing game & information
links
