Camps in Darfur struggle with aid groups' exit

Reporting from Zam Zam Camp, Sudan -- Feverish and dehydrated since fleeing to this overcrowded displacement camp last month, 2-year-old Manahel Abakar was supposed to be one the beneficiaries of the International Criminal Court effort to bring justice to Darfur.

Instead she became one of its unintended casualties.

The little girl died last week on a straw mat under the baking sun, surrounded by anxious family members helpless to save her. Their only shelter is a threadbare blanket, sagging over broken tree branches.

The situation at the Zam Zam camp, hard even in the best of times, is more desperate because the aid groups that deliver emergency food, water and healthcare were shut down this month by Sudan's government in retaliation after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir.

"We are innocent," said Khatar Yusuf, 38, a father of four who lives in the camp, outside El Fasher in Northern Darfur. "We're not political. But now it's our children who are sick and dying. No one is taking care of them."

International aid groups and the United Nations are scrambling to fill the gaps left by the expulsion of the 13 foreign aid groups, including several of the largest providers of food, clean water, education and healthcare to Darfur's displacement camps.

Most are cautiously optimistic that they can avert the near-term catastrophe that would come with the lack of essentials such as food and water. The World Food Program has begun an emergency distribution of a two-month supply to the most affected areas. UNICEF is focusing on delivering extra fuel to run about three dozen crucial water stations.

The international community spends more than $1 billion a year in Darfur, one of the largest and most expensive aid efforts in the world.

"It will take some time to feel the impacts," said Daniel Augstburger, head of the humanitarian sector for the U.N. Mission in Darfur. "The operation here is like a big tanker. It takes time to change course."

The Sudanese government insists that local charities and official agencies will replace the expelled groups, which it accused of acting as "spies" for the International Criminal Court.

But as Manahel's death painfully underscores, people are already falling through the cracks, particularly in the areas of healthcare and disease prevention.

An outbreak of meningitis in the massive Kalma camp near Nyala has claimed two lives in the last week, in part because medical groups in charge of monitoring the disease were kicked out.

Doctors Without Borders was forced to abandon a remote hospital at the foot of the Jebel Marra mountains with several dozen patients still in their beds.

At Al Salaam camp near El Fasher, more than 600 makeshift latrines, which serve nearly 50,000 people, are overflowing with waste because Oxfam International is no longer sending trucks to empty them.

The same camp lost its only hospital, run by the International Rescue Committee. Last week a new mother nearly died after she fell unconscious from breathing problems and had to travel an hour by donkey cart to the nearest emergency room.