Sudan: ICRC Distributes Food, seeds and tools to 138,000 people facing food insecurity

Residents of Beli Serief arrive for the Distribution in South Darfur. CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Shiemaa Ahmed ICRC

Khartoum (ICRC) – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), together with the Sudanese Red Crescent Society (SRCS), is distributing seeds, tools and food to 138,000 people facing food insecurity in North, South and Central Darfur.

"These families who depend on farming are among the most vulnerable in Darfur and do not have enough food to get them through the lean season. The food we are providing is meant to help farmers in the short-term, but our goal is to ensure that they undertake agricultural production and sustain it, so they can gradually rebuild their livelihoods," said Kedir Awol Omar, Head of the ICRC Delegation in Sudan.

More than 475 metric tons of seeds, which include sorghum, groundnuts, cowpeas, sesame, faba beans, tomato, eggplant, okra, onion and watermelon, will be provided to farmers by the ICRC in consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture, along with farming tools like donkey ploughs.

At the same time, the ICRC and the Ministry of Animal Resources are vaccinating 800,000 livestock against common diseases. The programme, re-launched for the first time since 2013, will run for the next three years and has begun with the vaccination of 300,000 animals in North Darfur, after which it will be extended to Central Darfur, South Darfur and West Kordofan.

As a neutral and independent humanitarian organisation, the ICRC continues to respond to huge humanitarian needs in Sudan. Last year, it delivered safe drinking water to around 49,000 persons in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile, and provided seeds and farming tools to 108,000 people in North and Central Darfur. The current intervention is part of wider efforts to mitigate the humanitarian impact on people in the Darfur States, Blue Nile and South Kordofan, in the aftermath of the armed conflict that ravaged these regions.