Blue tents stand in tight rows at the Daba Naira camp in Tawila, 68 kilometres west of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur in Sudan, racked by war. The tents were set up by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), with support from the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority. Relief teams have erected 3,000 new tents in recent months, but the number is negligible compared with the needs of more than 665,000 displaced people, the IOM said in a statement.
The most pressing question remains: how can this number of tents possibly be enough for hundreds of thousands of displaced people, especially when rainfall threatens to turn the low‑lying ground into swamps? Abdelbagi Mohamed Hamid, the minister of social welfare and humanitarian affairs coordinator in the Darfur region, told Al Jazeera Arabic that the regional government appealed to donors, including the Turkish ambassador, to provide tents for the displaced. As a result, Turkiye allocated 30,000 tents to be distributed in Darfur and Kordofan through the IOM.
Abdelbagi said 3,000 of 6,000 expected tents were erected in the Daba Naira camp in Tawila. Another 2,450 were delivered to the Salam, al‑Wihda and al‑Nakheel camps in Shaeria locality in South and East Darfur. The minister said the Malha locality had the greatest need for humanitarian assistance in Darfur, followed by Tina, Karnoy and Um Baru areas.
The Tina border crossing should be opened to allow the delivery of aid to these isolated areas, which suffer from acute shortages of food, medicine and fuel, while the war has deepened their isolation and worsened their humanitarian situation, he said. Abdelbagi warned that providing shelter alone is not enough to confront the crisis, given the looming danger of famine, which could prove deadlier than the war itself, as humanitarian organisations struggle to reach many affected regions. The arrival of the new tents coincided with the beginning of the rainy season and an outbreak of fires sweeping through displacement camps, increasing the suffering of displaced people living under tattered canopies without protection from wind and rain, amid acute shortages of food, clean water and healthcare.
The IOM warned of persistent and worsening humanitarian needs in Tawila, as services deteriorate and diseases like cholera spread amid a lack of clean drinking water, resulting in watery diarrhoea and skin infections. The camps are overcrowded and lack basic sanitation. The organisation, while continuing to expand the number of shelters in the Daba Naira camp, cannot keep up with the rapid pace of displacement.
Ahmed Mousa, a displaced man from el-Fasher who is staying in the Daba Naira camp, told Al Jazeera that the new tents do not cover even a tenth of the camp’s needs, with people sleeping in the rain in the open and children falling ill without adequate care. Fatima Ibrahim, a displaced woman in the same camp, said people fled el-Fasher in search of safety – only to find themselves exposed to the elements, hunger and disease. We are dropping like flies from hunger and disease.
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