KHARTOUM — United Nations international staff have returned to
Sudan's South Kordofan for the first time in months, the UN said on
Saturday, as global concern mounts over food shortages in the war-torn
state.
"Today, FAO and OCHA flew back there by helicopter and they
landed safely" in the state capital of Kadugli, Damian Rance, a public
information officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told AFP.
FAO is the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Sudan
severely restricts the work of foreign relief agencies in the state
where fighting broke out last June. For months, expatriate aid workers
had not been allowed into South Kordofan or Blue Nile, where a similar
conflict began in September.
The first expatriate staff to return,
from the UN children's agency and the UN security bureau, arrived in
Kadugli on Friday by road, Rance said.
"This follows a decision
made earlier by the government of Sudan to authorise their return," Mark
Cutts, who heads OCHA's office in the country, said in a statement.
The
international staff who went back are office heads, so their arrival
"essentially boosts the skill sets" available to assess people's needs
and coordinate aid distribution if foreign relief workers are granted
wider access to the region, Rance said.
UN officials have
repeatedly said they need full access -- including to rebel-held areas
-- to properly assess the needs of the people.
The US special
envoy for Sudan, Princeton Lyman, said last month that the food
situation is so dire that Washington warned Khartoum it would consider
ways for aid to be sent in without Sudanese government approval.
On
Thursday, Sudan's Humanitarian Aid Commission presented the results of
an assessment which showed the food situation in 11 of 19 South Kordofan
districts was good.
It did not mention the other eight districts.
After
conducting its own assessment, the UN's World Food Programme gave food
last week to about 17,000 needy people who had fled to the outskirts of
government-held Kadugli after recent fighting elsewhere in South
Kordofan.
Ethnic minority insurgents from the Sudan People's
Liberation Movement-North, who fought alongside the former rebels now
ruling South Sudan, are battling government troops in South Kordofan and
Blue Nile.
South Sudan became independent in July last year after
an overwhelming vote for secession that followed more than two decades
of civil war.
"We believe that unless we're able to mount a
humanitarian operation that has the consent of all sides, the situation
there is going to deteriorate very rapidly," Cutts told AFP earlier.
He
said aid agencies "are waiting for a positive response from the
government" on a joint proposal by the UN, African Union and Arab League
to assess the needs and deliver aid throughout the conflict area.
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