Resilience of Vulnerable Internally Displaced Persons between Humanitarian Food Security Assistance and Sustainable Social Development Programmes in West Darfur

Abstract

The Departments of West Darfur State Government, national civil society organizations, and international voluntary action organizations provide humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Geneina and Habila in West Darfur, Sudan. According to the 2008 Sudan census, the population of IDPs was estimated at 1.6 million due to civil war, drought, and desertification in the region. Throughout this paper, the term 'old' IDPs will be used to refer to people whose age is 60+ years. The main objectives of the study was to identify the degree to which vulnerable 'old' IDPs rely on humanitarian food security assistance and sustainable development programmes in West Darfur (Geneina and Habila). Other objectives included to gain knowledge of the socio-economic characteristics of 'old' IDPs and their families, to explore food insecurity causes and the food security strategies adapted by the 'old' IDPs in the two camps of Geneina and Habila, to increase our understanding of the socio-economic conditions of the IDP old people (60+ years) at the Geneina and Habila camps in terms of income, land and animal ownership systems, and the social protection system and to identify social development services and facilities related to water, health, education and social insurance. These objective are achieved by using a questionnaire approved by the Humanitarian Aid Commission, as well using the qualitative analysis by adopting the focus group discussions, and a review and analysis of secondary data. The questionnaire was administered in 2017 in urban Geneina and rural Habila. Simple random sampling was used to select 220 IDPs: 117 women and 103 men.The Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences ( SPSS), was used to analyse the collected data and these are some of the study results with using Chi-Square test independent of the factors contributing to Low productivity and area, the study found that there is no relationship between the two factors, and the same result for the factors of food shortage coping strategies and the IDP age, while using the same test a relationship has been found between the factors of preventing from raising animals and the camp location area Keywords: Internally Displaced Peoples, humanitarian assistance, social development, food insecurity https://doi.org/10.24897/acn.64.68.211