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Land grabbers: Africa's hidden revolution
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20 May 2012
Land grabbers: Africa's hidden revolution
Vast swaths of Africa are being bought up by oligarchs, sheikhs and agribusiness corporations. But, as this extract from The Land Grabbers explains, centuries of history are being destroyed.
Fred Pearce
{sidebar id=11 align=right}Omot Ochan was sitting in a remnant of forest on an old waterbuck skin and eating maize from a calabash gourd. He was lean and tall, wearing only a pair of combat pants. Behind him was a straw hut, where bare-breasted women and barefoot children cooked fish on an open fire. A little way off were other huts, the remains of what was once a sizable village. Omot said he and his family were from the Anuak tribe. They had lived in the forest for 10 generations. "This land belonged to our father. All round here is ours. For two days' walk." He described the distant tree that marked the boundary with the next village. "When my father died, he said don't leave the land. We made a promise. We can't give it to the foreigners."
Our conversation was punctuated by the rumble of trucks passing on a dirt road just 20 metres away. The dust clouds they created wafted into the clearing and rained down on the leaves on the trees. Beyond the road huge earth-diggers were excavating a canal. Omot watched them: "Two years ago, the company began chopping down the forest and the bees went away. The bees need thick forest. We used to sell honey. We used to hunt with dogs too. But after the farm came, the animals here disappeared. Now we only have fish to sell." And with the company draining the wetland, the fish will probably be gone soon, too.
Gambella is the poorest province in one of the world's poorest nations – a lowland appendix in the far south-west of Ethiopia. Geographically and ethnically, the hot, swampy province feels like part of the new neighbouring state of South Sudan, rather than the cool highlands of the rest of Ethiopia. Indeed, Gambella was effectively in Sudan when it was ruled by the British from Khartoum, until 1956. For the half-century since, the government in Addis Ababa has ruled here, but it has invested little and cared even less for its Nilotic tribal inhabitants, whose jet-black skin and tall, elegant physique mark them out from the highlanders. The livestock-herding Nuer, who frequently cross into South Sudan, and the Anuak, who are farmers and fishers, are peripheral to highland Ethiopia in every sense.
Only three flights a week go to the provincial capital, also called Gambella. When you get there, there are no taxis, because there is no demand. The road from the airport is a dirt track through an empty landscape. Gambella town is a shambles. Its population of 30,000 has no waste collection system, so garbage piles up. The drains don't work, public water supplies are sporadic and electricity is occasional. There are few public latrines. The couple of paved roads are heavily potholed and give out before the town limits. My billet, the Norwegian-built guest house at the Bethel Synod church, was probably the dirtiest, bleakest and most ill-kempt building in which I have ever rested my head. The only vehicle in town for hire was a 40-year-old Toyota minibus of dubious roadworthiness, with a crew of three. I took it.
Of late, the central government in Addis Ababa has stopped pretending that the province of Gambella doesn't exist. It now seems intent on taming a populace that might prefer rule from Juba, the capital of South Sudan. In practice, that means bringing in foreign agribusiness and collecting the province's dispersed population in state-designated villages, while their forests, fields and hunting grounds are handed over to outsiders. In the service of capitalism, the Gambella "villagisation" programme will relocate a domestic population much in the manner of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
I set out along the only road south from Gambella town to find the land grabbers. On the outskirts, as we hit the dirt, my driver decided to pick up a dozen hitchhikers. From then on, we were the local bus service. To an outsider, much of the province looks deserted. For miles, the only obvious sign of human activity was the odd cellphone tower, usually with a generator to power it and a native guard. But there were hidden villages in the bush. Their members would sit by the roadside trying to sell mangoes and other fruit to any vehicles that passed. Mangoes cost less than three cents each and the price had halved by late afternoon. Soon after the small town of Abobo, the road passed through a landscape of ash, smoke and charred trees. This was land newly acquired by my first land grabber – Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali Al Amoudi, a Saudi oil billionaire with large holdings in Ethiopian plantations, mines and real estate. In 2011, Fortune magazine put his wealth at more than $12bn. Ethiopian-born, he is a million-dollar donor to the Clinton Foundation and also a confidant of Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, and his ruling party, which had granted a 60-year concession on 10,000 hectares of Gambella to Amoudi's company, Saudi Star.
Amoudi has been eyeing agriculture since the world food price spike in 2008 sent Saudi Arabia into a spin about its food supplies. He is intent on shipping most of his intended produce, including in excess of a million tonnes of rice a year, to Saudi Arabia. There, he has been feted by the king for making investments abroad to keep the kingdom fed. To smooth the wheels of commerce, Amoudi has recruited one of Zenawi's former ministers, Haile Assegdie, as chief executive of Saudi Star.
Saudi Star's concession is based around the Alwero dam, built in the 1980s to irrigate a state cotton farm that never happened. The dam's rusting sign still advertises the consulting services of Soviet engineers Selkhozpromexport. Amoudi is digging a 30km canal from the dam to irrigate rice paddies. Once the old state farm is watered, he wants to expand to at least 250,000 hectares, to grow sunflowers and maize.
At the gate of the Saudi Star compound, I watched soldiers usher in giant Volvo trucks and Massey Ferguson tractors and workmen starting to replace the temporary buildings with new permanent structures. Close by, they were laying an airstrip in a recently made clearing in the forest. Nobody at the company here or in Gambella town would talk to me. Perhaps they thought there was nothing to add to their boss's media statement that "land grabbing poses no harm on the environment or on the local community".
Our next hitchhikers were a couple of schoolgirls who wanted a lift to their home 2km away. It was there, in a small clearing in a forest by the road, where we found Omot Ochan in his combat pants, describing how Amoudi and his company were destroying his world. Hearing his testimony of ancestral connection with this patch of forest, and his determination to keep it, I was struck by how most westerners have lost any sense of place and attachment to the land. I move around all the time and buy and sell houses without feeling ties to the soil. But here in Gambella, their land is like their blood. It is everything. And to lose it would be to lose their identity.
Omot insisted Saudi Star had no right to be in his forest. The company had not even told the villagers that it was going to dig a canal across their land. "Nobody came to tell us what was happening." He did remember officials from the "villagisation" programme dropping by to say the families should go to the new village at Pokedi, across the River Alwero from Saudi Star's compound. But that was all. Omot had no doubt the purpose of the new village was to clear them and others off land taken from them to give to Saudi Star. So far, his family and their neighbours had refused to go, even though their children walked to the school at Pokedi on a Monday morning and didn't return until Friday evening.
"In our culture, going to a different place is unusual. You get different people and there is quarrelling," he told me, as his children gathered and grabbed the remaining maize. "We should remain in our own area. We won't go unless we are forced. God gave us this land." Another truck rumbled past, spraying dust over the tiny forest community now ostracised by its own government and under siege from a Saudi billionaire. After the truck had gone, I noticed a large, dead stork in the road. A woman headed off down the road with a bucket, on a long walk to find water.
Source: The Observer UK
No commentsEurope's secondhand clothes brings mixed blessings to Africa
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- Created on Tuesday, 22 May 2012 00:00
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07 May 2012
Europe's secondhand clothes brings mixed blessings to Africa
Roaring trade in often smuggled charity castoffs in African street markets risks ruining domestic textile industries
Monica Mark in Freetown and Lagos
As a boy growing up in Sierra Leone, Kemoh Bah prized his Michael Jackson T-shirt. "I was the only one who had this kind of T-shirt in my village, and I felt like I was part of American culture," said Bah, dressed head-to-toe in clothes emblazoned with logos outside his roadside secondhand clothes shack in the capital, Freetown.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}Nicknamed "junks" in Sierra Leone, hand-me-downs account for the majority of outfits in a country where seven out of 10 people live on less than $2 a day. The industry has ballooned to $1bn in Africa since 1990. And yet the combination of western charity and African brand enthusiasm is not always a force for good. Quite apart from the ethical issue of donated goods becoming tradeable commodities on which middlemen can turn a profit, there is the threat to local textile markets to consider.
About a third of globally donated clothes make their way via wholesale rag houses to sub-Saharan Africa, where they end up lining the streets or filling small boutiques. Hawkers say Christmas time, when westerners flock to offload clothes to charity shops, brings in the biggest bales. The lucrative industry has even spawned fake charity clothes collectors in the west.
But critics say the billion-dollar trade risks swamping fragile domestic textiles markets, and 12 countries in Africa are among 31 globally that have now banned their import.
"The only way I survived was to start making Muslim women's clothes," said tailor Bema Sidibe from Ivory Coast, where around 20 tonnes of secondhand clothes flooded the country last year. In neighbouring Ghana, 10 times that amount arrive in an average year. "Muslim women don't go for these western-influenced clothes and around traditional feast days you are guaranteed a few new outfits will be ordered," Sidibe said.
The influx of cheap clothes has heaped pressure on an industry already struggling to adapt to changing fashions amid patchy infrastructure. During his presidency in Ghana, John Kufuor introduced national "Friday wear day" to encourage citizens to wear traditional clothes made using the jewel-coloured wax fabrics associated with African garments.
For many though, the trade allows clothes to be bought and sold cheaply and provides desperately needed jobs.
Increasingly, taste as well as necessity has come into play. Picking through Kemoh's roadside cabin jammed between crumbling colonial buildings and corrugated-zinc shacks, bargain-hunter Fatima rifles through Gucci castoffs. "You can buy even cheaper Chinese ready-mades, but then you look like everybody else. Here I can find designer clothes no one else has," she said, sporting a rainbow-coloured mohican haircut.
A roaring trade continues across Africa, from Ghana's thriving "faux" markets to Nigeria's "bend down" boutiques.
Each month, using shipping containers supposedly full of cars, a network of traffickers, including Chidi Ugwe, smuggles around 1.5 tonnes of clothes to Nigeria's sprawling Katangua market, the largest flea market in the country.
"Most of the clothes land in smaller countries like Togo and Benin and then we get them to Nigeria. We call them flying goods, because they fly into the country without being seen," Ugwe, a former customs officer, said, while thousands of shoppers thronged through the narrow market streets.
The clothes mostly come from Europe, although relatively affluent countries in Asia also provide a steady trickle. So popular are the clothes in Katangua market that thousands of small-time traders also bribe border officials to bring in their own bales.
"We call our shops 'bend down' boutiques because we have so many clothes we just pour them on the floor and you just bend down and select," explained Mercy Azbuike, surrounded by piles of clothes overflowing from her wooden shack and piled into wheelbarrows outside.
"Even those selling clothes in boutiques [proper stores] are buying from us," said Azbuike, who also travels to neighbouring Benin twice a month to replenish her stock.
"It's the same boutique but you don't have to bend down so it's more expensive," she said, emptying out a Disney rucksack stuffed with children's pyjamas. Mothers with children elbowed past teenagers. "I cover myself but under my abaya [Muslim dress] I still want to wear nice, modern clothes," said Fatoumata, 18, as she paid $13 for sequinned Levi's jeans.
Not every seller is so successful. Emmanuel Odaibanga, who sells ski suits and jackets in a stifling shack, said business was slow. "It's easy to buy jackets [from smugglers], hard to sell them," he shrugged.
Source: The Guardian UK
Effort to ban Tintin comic book fails in Belgium
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Effort to ban Tintin comic book fails in Belgium
Offensive as Tintin au Congo may be, recourse to the law is misguided and counterproductive
Jogchum Vrielink for the Inforrm blog, part of the Guardian Legal Network
Tintin is experiencing new and exciting adventures these days. Not just in the cinema, but in Belgian courts as well.
Bienvenu Mbuto Mondondo, a Congolese national studying in Brussels, filed suit to obtain an injunction against the continued publication, distribution and sale of Hergé's comic book Tintin in the Congo (Tintin au Congo), as well as seeking to have the book withdrawn from bookshops and libraries in Belgium. Mondondo did so on the basis of alleged violations of the Belgian anti-racism legislation. In subsidiary order he demanded that a disclaimer be printed on the comic's cover, warning of its offensive nature, along with the inclusion of an introduction of a similar nature. Mondondo was supported in his claims by the minority organization Conseil représentatif des associations noires (Cran).
{sidebar id=11 align=right}On 10 February 2012, the Brussels Court of First Instance rejected all the applicants' claims. The Court also rejected the counterclaims by Casterman, the series' publisher, and Moulinsart, the company which was set up to protect and promote the work of Hergé. Both had asked for 15,000 euros as compensation for 'vexatious proceedings'.
Tintin in the Congo
The comic Tintin in the Congo was first published between 1930 and 1931, a time when Congo was suffering under Belgian colonial rule. The album graphically depicts the Congolese as monkey-like, and portrays them as stupid, childish, and lazy. In later years, when a colour version of the album was published, Hergé made several changes to it, partly because he acknowledged that the work was overly influenced by the colonial ideas of its time. In the new version the stereotypical caricatures of the Congolese were rendered somewhat less extreme, for instance.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}Several textual changes were made as well, and most references to Congo being a Belgian colony were removed. (Although the latter was done mostly to broaden the book's appeal to an international readership, and not so much because Hergé rejected imperial rule or believed that it would come to an end – which, in the case of Congo, did not happen until 1960, whereas the colour edition first appeared in 1946.)
The album has regularly been a cause for debate, particularly in the Anglophone world. Due to ongoing controversies it was not published in English until 1991. The colour edition did not even appear until 2005. When finally it was published (by Egmont Publishing), it included a cautionary wrapper indicating that it contained "bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period" that may be offensive to contemporary readers. The edition also encompassed an introduction providing additional historical contextualisation. Nevertheless, in 2007 the (former) Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) asked the bookstores Borders and Waterstones to stop selling the book, in response to a complaint it had received. The CRE stated that the album contained "imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the 'savage natives' look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles"
Whichever way you look at it, the content of this book is blatantly racist. High street shops, and indeed any shops, ought to think very carefully about whether they ought to be selling and displaying it. Yes, it was written a long time ago, but this certainly does not make it acceptable. It beggars belief that in this day and age (…) any shop would think it acceptable to sell and display 'Tintin In The Congo'. The only place that it might be acceptable for this to be displayed would be in a museum, with a big sign saying 'old fashioned, racist claptrap' (Commission for Racial Equality, "CRE Statement on the children's book 'Tintin in the Congo'", press release, 12 July 2007).
The bookstores refused to remove the comic from their shelves entirely, but they did move it from the children's section to the adult section of graphic novels. Other British retailers sell Tintin in the Congo along with a label that it is unsuitable for readers under the age of 16.
In the US, plans by Little, Brown & Company to publish the colour version were abandoned altogether in 2007, seemingly on account of the controversies in Britain and Belgium. To this day Tintin in the Congo remains the only album in the Tintin-series never to have been published in the US. Furthermore, some libraries have restricted public access to the album. Brooklyn public library, for instance, has kept the comic under lock and key since 2007, due to a request by patrons and library employees, rendering it available only upon request and appointment.[1] Other controversial works, including Hitler's Mein Kampf, are readily available in the library's open shelves.
Colonial representation and contemporary harassment
Judged by contemporary standards, Tintin in the Congo is blatantly colonial, highly paternalistic, and offensively stereotypical, to say the least. The question, however, that the Brussels Court had to answer was whether its present-day publication and distribution could be legally prohibited under the anti-racism legislation. The Court rightly rejects this possibility.
The Court first rejects the claim that publishing and distributing the comic amounts to 'harassment'. Harassment is legally defined as "unwanted conduct connected to a person's race or ethnic origin with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, and of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment". According to the applicants this definition was satisfied by the publication and sale of a comic book containing ideas and illustrations that are offensive, degrading, and insulting to people on the basis of their origin or skin-colour.
In response, the Court states that neither the album itself nor its dissemination and sale have the purpose of violating anyone's dignity or to create a humiliating or offensive environment. In light of the legal definition of harassment, the question that remained to be answered – according to the Court – was whether it did not have this effect either. The Court again answered this in the negative, judging that "the continued sale, in our era, of a comic book created in colonial times, suffused with the ideas and attitudes of its time of creation, cannot be regarded as violating the dignity of a person, or group of persons, protected by the Anti-racism Act". Especially, the Court continues, since the commercialisation of the album is an integral part of the sale of the complete works of Hergé, "without there being placed any special value on the comic book in dispute".
Although the outcome ultimately is that the sale and distribution of Tintin in the Congo cannot be prohibited, the Court is nonetheless insufficiently critical of the premise of the applicants' arguments, which are simply based on a mistaken idea of what (legally) constitutes harassment. The applicants believe the prohibition of harassment to entail a general ban on all speech or illustrations that are humiliating or offending to people on the basis of their protected characteristics (in this case their skin colour or ethnic origin). This broad interpretation disregards both the language and the spirit of the harassment provision.
The prohibition of harassment, derived from (and imposed by) European discrimination law,was designed to counter forms of person-oriented harassing, pestering and stalking behaviour in the workplace and other societal contexts, such as the provision of goods and services. The prohibition's aim is to remove immediate barriers and obstacles to societal participation for individuals belonging to protected groups. In Belgium, the prohibition of harassment has been extended to cover the entire scope of the anti-racism legislation. However, and this is essential, it still requires the violation of the dignity of one or more concrete persons, and not of an abstract group such as 'the Congolese' or black people in general. The legal text explicitly refers to 'a person': clearly, this language was not intended to cover mediated and impersonal types of 'group defamation' by means of the mass-media or comic books. It is limited to (anti-)social situations in which someone is the direct and personal object of unwanted conduct with the 'purpose or effect' of affecting one's dignity. In no way was this the case here.
Even if one adheres to this strict, person-oriented interpretation of discriminatory harassment, the concept already yields significant tensions with free speech principles (See e.g. E. Volokh, "Freedom of Speech and Workplace Harassment", 39 UCLA L. Rev. 1992, 1791). However, if one accepts the 'impersonality'-premise of the applicants – as the Court does – the anti-harassment provision is rendered virtually limitless, amounting to an open-ended prohibition, targeting any and all speech that somehow 'violates the dignity of a group'. Needless to say, this would result in unprecedented, and patently unconstitutional, restrictions on the freedom of expression.
Tintin and hate speech
Another set of the applicants' claims was based on the hate speech provisions contained in the Antiracism Act. This concerns firstly the prohibition of 'incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence on the basis of colour and ethnic origin' and secondly the ban on the 'dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred'. Both provisions are derived from the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
However, their seemingly broad drafting notwithstanding, these provisions are interpreted very restrictively by the Belgian Constitutional Court. Regarding 'incitement' the Constitutional Court requires active instigation of third parties to undertake certain actions. Apparently finding the term 'hatred' too vague and subjective in its generic meaning, it even specified that only incitement to hateful acts can be considered unlawful; thereby excluding incitement to merely negative attitudes or feelings from the realm of the provision. Finally, the Constitutional Court requires the presence of malicious intent for the incitement clause to be applied. In other words, aside from the requirement that, given the content and the context of the words used, the impugned expressions must incite and provoke violence or discrimination, it must also be demonstrated that the latter was the defendant's conscious and malevolent intention. (The European Court of Human Rights accepts much broader hate speech restrictions. In the case of Feret v Belgium, for instance, the Court considered it necessary "to prohibit or prevent all types of expression which advocate, incite, promote or justify hate based on intolerance" [64]. However, while the ECtHR is accepting of virtually any restriction under the banner of hate speech, it does not require these restrictions from States.)
Similarly, the prohibition of 'disseminating racist ideas' has been construed narrowly by the Constitutional Court. Here too the Court requires special intent. More specifically the dissemination should have as its demonstrable aim to 'incite to hatred and to advocate and justify discrimination and segregation' of the targeted group. Regarding content, the speech – in order to be prohibited – must be 'contemptuous, hateful and malicious'; specifying that it particularly targets expressions of 'classical' biological racism.
In the light of this, it was unsurprising that the Brussels Court came to the conclusion that (the publication and dissemination of) Tintin in the Congo did not meet the standards of the hate speech provisions, and that an injunction could therefore not be justified on that basis. The Court concluded that the claims failed due to the 'evident absence of the required malicious intent', both on the part of Hergé, and on the part of Casterman and Moulinsart. Having established this, the Court deemed it redundant even to investigate the additional arguments brought forward by the claimants.
This approach is somewhat regrettable. At least, it would have been (even) more convincing – as well as more logical, legally speaking – if the court had firstassessed whether the contents of the comic were sufficient to meet the threshold-level required for the offenses, instead of looking exclusively at the required intent. The former is also clearly not the case if one applies the rather strict requirements adopted by the Constitutional Court. Taking this approach would have served to clearly demarcate the space available for free speech, something which the sole reliance on the – inherently subjective – element of intent fails to do. (This is not to say that intent should not an essential precondition for hate speech to be deemed punishable; far from it. However, for reasons of - inter alia - legal certainty it is preferable to first analyse whether the 'material' rather than moral aspects of the provisions have been fulfilled.)
This is all the more important since the fundamental problem with the claims is that they would simply open the floodgates for innumerable additional prohibitions, if they were to be allowed. Tintin in the Congo is undoubtedly offensive to many people, but if its contents are brought under the prohibitions of the Antiracism Act, then an endless list of other works would also wind up in the crosshairs. This is true for most religious books, as well as many of the great literary works, and the writings of virtually all great thinkers of early modernity. Allowing a legal ban on such speech therefore implies the abolition of freedom of expression itself.
Counterproductive
All things considered, it is puzzling that the applicants opted to pursue a judicial solution in this case. In doing so, they could only lose. It was clear, from the start, that the comic's contents – albeit offensive – did not amount to a violation of the anti-racism legislation; let alone that this would be the case for publishing and distributing it.
Mondondo indicated that now at least Tintin in the Congo is the object of debate and discussion, and that he would persevere due to that 'success'; even claiming a readiness to go to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (R. Singer, "Racist 'Tintin in the Congo' book remains on shelves following a Belgian judge's ruling", Blouin Artinfo (International edition), 7 March 2012). Mondondo not only appealed the civil ruling by the Brussels court, but also initiated criminal proceedings against Moulinsart en Casterman. Moreover, in 2009, he extended his case to France as well (V. Sasportas, "'Tintin au Congo' menacé d'interdiction", Le Figaro, 18 September 2009).
Mondondo's view however ignores the counterproductive effects that the legal approach has for his cause. Admittedly, the complaint as well as the ruling have received significant media attention. However, the content of the coverage was predominantly of a negative, or even mocking, character. Precisely because Mondondo and the Cran opted for a legal solution, the applicants were routinely portrayed as overly sensitive, 'politically correct', and bent on censorship. Even the Centre for Equal Opportunities – the Belgian agency responsible for enforcing the federal discrimination legislation – warned against "over-reaction and hyper political correctness". In other words, the legal approach has not given rise to the desired critical discussion about the comic itself.
In fact, quite the opposite is the case. Firstly, there have been unintended commercial effects, to say the least. Sales of the album rocketed, following the British discussion about a ban, by as much as 3,800 per cent (See B. Malkin, "Race row Tintin is best-seller", Daily Telegraph, 14 July 2007). The comic temporarily even jumped to 5th place in the Amazon bestseller list. The lawsuit(s) in Belgium had similar effects, causing the French version of the album to temporarily go out of stock in September 2007. Secondly, and more fundamentally, the lawsuits shut down discussion rather than promoting it, by the aura of legitimacy that the inevitable rejection of the claims and the equally inevitable future acquittal yield. These outcomes wrongly suggest, to the general public, that there is nothing wrong with the ideas on which the work is based, while in fact these do require critical debate and analysis. However, instrumentalising the law and the court system for the purposes of this debate seems both misdirected and counterproductive.
This post previously appeared on the Strasbourg Observers and Africa is a Country blogs, and was reproduced on the Inforrm blog with permission and thanks.
Source: The Guardian UK, 14 May 2012
Catholic conference: many problems, few hopes, no message
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Catholic conference: many problems, few hopes, no message
Conflict in Nuba mountains may lead to devastating epidemics, say doctors
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Conflict in Nuba mountains may lead to devastating epidemics, say doctors
Health workers warn that UN aid agencies are being prevented from delivering vital supplies of vaccines to the children of refugees fleeing the fighting in Sudan
Maeve McClenaghan and Tracy McVeigh
UN aid agencies are under attack from doctors working with refugees who have been displaced by fighting in Sudan, with claims that they are not doing enough to get medical supplies through to children in desperate need.
Common vaccines against childhood diseases are part of Unicef's programme to protect the most vulnerable, but supplies dried up nearly a year ago in areas of conflict around the Nuba mountains, according to research by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Now there are fears that outbreaks of infectious diseases, including measles, could prove devastating to people sheltering from the violence, especially young children.
More than a million people have fled to the Nuba mountains after a rise in violence along the border of the newly created South Sudan. Local militias are fighting over water, cattle and land, while there are bigger political conflicts between Khartoum and Juba yet to be resolved.
But the area has provided little safety. It is being held by the Sudan People's Liberation Army and is regularly bombed by aircraft operated by the forces of the Sudanese government. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has banned all UN agencies from operating in the area, with specific exceptions.
According to Unicef, its workers have managed to carry out only one vaccination campaign in the area since June last year. The children's agency says the polio campaign reached 1,700 children under five in areas of the Nuba mountains controlled by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N). They had aimed to reach 4,000. The UN agency also claims it managed to transfer 1,500 polio doses to the area but admits those supplies have long since run out.
However, doctors in the area angrily reject the claims being made by Unicef. They say the last batch of vaccines they received was in August and they were unusable, after being exposed to sunlight and heat when the box that contained them was opened by security forces in Kadugli, the province's capital.
Dr Alamin Osman, director-general of the secretariat of health for the region, said: "I can confirm the last vaccines received in good condition were before the war. Unicef in Sudan must answer to the world why they allowed Sudan security to mishandle those items they claim to have sent."
Osman is worried a health disaster could be on the way. He ran out of vaccines a long time ago. "There are reported cases of measles, but I am not in a position to do anything," he said.
According to experts, an outbreak of measles could prove devastating to children weakened by hunger and upheaval.
Tim O'Dempsey of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine said: "Measles can spread rapidly, particularly in situations of overcrowding. In situations like this about 20% of children with measles may die and survivors may be disfigured, or may be left blind, both common complications in severely malnourished children."
Author and journalist Aidan Hartley, who has just been through the region, said: "I saw rural clinics where the only medicines were ones captured from the SAF [Sudan Armed Forces] government forces or herbs or salt and water. It was medieval. Thousands are going to die in Nuba. Deaths could be avoided if there were vaccines, emergency relief, basic drugs and food, but there aren't."
The actor George Clooney, who went to Nuba earlier this year, has co-founded the Enough Project with activist John Prendergast, which aims to raise awareness of the humanitarian situation in Sudan and South Sudan. Prendergast claimed Bashir was deliberately strangling supplies to refugees.
"When the Khartoum government uses starvation as a war tactic by denying access to humanitarian organisations, there are other quiet killers that often end up being more deadly than starvation itself," Prendergast said.
"In famines, health crises usually take more lives than hunger. If kids can't be vaccinated against some of the deadliest diseases in the world, then the crisis that is unfolding in the Nuba mountains right now could be even worse than the worst-case scenarios."
A few smaller NGOs, such as the Irish charity Trócaire, are managing to get limited supplies into the region's only hospital, but this trickle does not come close to requirements.
Dr Tom Catena, an American missionary and the only trained surgeon in Nuba, said: "We've had no resupply of vaccines since they ran out several months ago. We've been trying to get some, but to no avail."
Ahmed Saeed, a humanitarian aid worker with a coalition of groups in the area, said: "Only a consensual access that is negotiated by the parties and internationally supported assistance on a large scale will meet the needs.
"I am expecting the UN to be pushing for unimpeded humanitarian access to all affected areas rather than justifying their tamed and limited presence in Kadugli by claiming access to SPLM-N-held areas," he added.
Unicef and other agencies need permission from Bashir to operate in the country and they say negotiations with Khartoum are continuing.
A spokesman for Unicef denied the shipment that had got through was ruined, saying: "The inspector opened the lid very briefly and only to confirm that they were indeed vaccines contained within the box."
The concerns come as Médecins Sans Frontières released a report ahead of next week's meeting in Geneva of the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organisation, which will be considering its new global vaccine action plan. The report, entitled The Right Shot, claims that the global vaccine strategy will fail to deliver by concentrating too heavily on getting newer vaccines to children and not enough on getting the basic package out to the "unreached" – 19 million of the poorest children who are not getting even the cheapest jabs.
"We, of course, welcome the effort to protect children from deadly diseases by getting vaccines, including new vaccines, but we feel the strategy is imbalanced, focusing too much on getting newer vaccines and not enough on those 19 million," said a spokesperson for Médecins Sans Frontières.
It wants more focus on developing medicines that don't need cold storage or follow-up doses, in order to deal with the practical problems on the ground in many underdeveloped nations.
Places like Nuba, where a million refugees are already isolated from the outside world and face restrictions from the Sudanese government, are in an increasingly precarious position. The approach of the rainy season, say those working in the area, will cause further problems by making the roads into the area impassable, sealing people off from outside help.
Source: The Observer UK