Feeding Sudan, talking peace in northern Uganda and the state of funding for the Java relief effort...

The head of the World Food Programme urged oil-rich Middle Eastern countries on Thursday to increase their donations tenfold, saying he'd like to see them give around $300 million a year.

Executive Director James Morris was speaking after returning from Sudan, the world's largest humanitarian operation. The WFP has been struggling to cover its work there - its $746 million budget is just 49.6 percent funded.

Wealthy countries lying just across the Red Sea from Sudan traditionally give most of their aid bilaterally or channel it through their own aid agencies. But Morris stressed that multilateral aid was far more effective.

"I would make the case that 90 percent of support for food that comes multilaterally gets to those who absolutely need it the most. And I would think that less than half the humanitarian food that is distributed bilaterally gets to those who need it the most," he said.

"The WFP should be raising $250 million to $300 million a year from the Middle East region ... I would say it's (currently) 10 percent of that."

He said there were also other countries that could do more, including China, Russia, Mexico and South Korea.

"It's the scandal of our time that 300 million kids are hungry in 2006," Morris said.

***

Media reports on Sudan have mostly focused on the plight of those fleeing horrific violence in the western Darfur region. But if you were a child, you might be better off in a camp in Darfur than in the east of the country where a separate crisis is simmering, largely unnoticed by the world.

Acute malnutrition among children is 17.7 percent in the east - a situation Morris described as "catastrophic". This compares to 11.9 percent in Darfur. The threshold for what's considered an emergency is 15 percent.

One reason for the difference is that the Sudanese authorities have placed heavier restrictions on access for aid groups working in the east, citing security concerns.

Rebels in the east accuse Khartoum of neglecting the region's development while exploiting its natural resources. The east is home to Sudan's largest gold mine, its main port and major oil pipeline.

"A good many IDPs (internally displaced people) are in camps that are in the most god-forsaken place imaginable," Morris said, referring to the hot, dry eastern state of Kassala.

Morris said the WFP could be feeding 5.7 to 6 million people in Sudan during the lean period around October - about 1 million of them in the east, 2.7 million in Darfur and 2 million in the south, which is emerging from two decades of civil war.

The WFP's funding problems in Sudan forced it to take the drastic step of halving the energy content of its rations for 2 million people in Darfur and the east - a decision Morris said was "one of the hardest of my life". A series of new donations means the rations now meet 85 percent of daily calorific needs.

Based on past experience, Morris says he still expects a shortfall of $240 million by the end of the year unless donors make a concerted effort to step up donations.

On a more positive note, he expects that the African Union's plans to increase the number of troops in Darfur would help the WFP reach people in need. Four WFP drivers have been killed to date and vehicles are often stolen.

Emma Batha
AlertNet journalist

***

So a team of Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels has been spotted at the RA International hotel in Juba, south Sudan, apparently ahead of the arrival of deputy leader Vincent Otti. According to south Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar, they're supposed to be kickstarting peace talks with the Ugandan government - though the Ugandan ambassador in Khartoum says it's news to him.

The backstory is that last month Machar and elusive LRA leader Joseph Kony got together in a rare meeting at which the rebels agreed to negotiations with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni mediated by the Sudanese.

Museveni has given the LRA, which has massacred villagers and kidnapped children in northern Uganda during a 20-year insurgency, until the end of July to lay down arms and begin talks. He also said he would guarantee Kony's safety if that happens.

The problem is that the LRA's top men are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, and as the ICC's first case, prosecutors are most unlikely to want to drop it in a hurry.

Tribal leaders from Acholiland in northern Uganda have asked the ICC to relax efforts to capture the LRA fugitives for now, to give Kony an incentive to talk peace. And they're not the only ones who think negotiating a settlement with Kony is a better option than trying to bang him up.

Sudan's First Vice President Salva Kiir has defended Machar's recent gift of $20,000 to Kony (to buy "food... not ammunition"), saying it would help start peace talks and stop the LRA looting and killing in south Sudan.

A group of Acholi diaspora have put forward a proposal in Uganda's New Vision newspaper that, among other things, would guarantee the LRA rebels' safety by allowing them to surrender to the United Nations, and have top leaders tried in Acholiland not the Hague.

In a commentary, one of the plan's backers argues it would be shortsighted to pretend the ICC dilemma doesn't exist: "It is...naive and even dishonest to reassure the LRA that the ICC will be called off so long as they willingly negotiate a peaceful surrender."

Considering this major sticking point, it's not too hard to find experts who think the current attempt at talks is unlikely to yield results.

"There are so many obstacles - the LRA are very unreliable and what can the south Sudanese really offer?" says Chatham House Africa analyst Tom Cargill in London. "Even if they do get anywhere at all, the ICC is likely to issue a statement saying it's still after these men. All previous efforts at negotiations have always been scuppered."

Given what's known about the cult-like Kony, a former altar boy and self-professed prophet, some doubt whether he'll be prepared to swap his life in the bush either for a nice house or a prison cell.

That means a military solution - favoured by Museveni, according to Cargill - may be more likely than any kind of negotiated settlement or surrender. Something more along the lines of Jonas Savimbi (the former leader of Angola's UNITA rebels who was killed in a battle with government forces in 2002) than Charles Taylor (Liberia's notorious warlord who was recently captured and is due to be tried by a U.N.-backed court).

For now, the underlying motives of both Kony and Museveni in agreeing to have a stab at peace seem questionable - and perhaps for both sides it's really about buying time.

According to Cargill, Museveni is hoping the international community will get more involved in the hunt for Kony, and wants to put LRA rebels in a position where they're more likely to fall into the hands of those out to get them.

As for Kony, some analysts think he's playing along while the LRA set up in the remote northern forests of Democratic Republic of Congo - where they'd be out of reach of Ugandan and Sudanese troops.

One thing's for sure: expect more smoke and mirrors...

***

The aid effort following the recent Java earthquake is now in full swing - but what's the situation with the funding of the relief effort?

A couple of days ago, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said donations were falling "egregiously short" of what's needed to address massive health and shelter needs.

"This is a disaster, but the media is hardly paying attention and donor interest is lagging," said Michael Kocher, IRC's regional director for Indonesia. "There is an urgent need for more funding if we're going to prevent disease outbreaks and provide viable shelter."

AlertNet decided to ask around and find out what's happening elsewhere. It seems that in the United States, some other aid charities have had a hard time drumming up cash from supporters in the first few days after the disaster.

An article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that, in the week following the quake, several agencies, including Lutheran World Relief (LWR), Church World Service and Relief International had raised less than $10,000 each from individual donors. Others such as Oxfam, Save the Children, CARE and the Red Cross had raised considerably more.

Since then, LWR says things have picked up a bit following an e-mail appeal to donors last Wednesday. But it can't explain why the response from donors was so slow in the immediate aftermath of the quake.

Although no one's prepared to stick their necks out and hazard a guess on the record, there's a feeling that perhaps the huge death tolls from Indian Ocean tsunami and Kashmir quake have made smaller disasters seem less important in the public eye (the Java disaster killed around 5,700 people).

The United Nations, meanwhile, has asked for $103 million to cover its response plan over the next six months and has so far received nearly $35 million in contributions and commitments, and $28 million in uncommitted (non-contractual) pledges.

"We're not screaming yet," a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told AlertNet, adding that it's still too early to tell how the funding situation is going to turn out.

The British Red Cross says its appeal has been successful so far, and Save the Children UK has been receiving a "slightly higher than normal" level of donations. For children's charity Plan UK, giving for the quake has been "steady but not massive".

In Britain, at least, it seems that the cash is rolling in pretty much according to plan, which is why the Disasters Emergency Committee - a charity umbrella group - has decided not to launch a national appeal. But things continue to look less rosy across the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, OCHA points out that raising immediate funds has been less important to some agencies that already had pre-positioned relief stocks and staff in Indonesia thanks to continuing operations after the Indian Ocean tsunami and preparations for a potential eruption of Mount Merapi on Java.

"It's a cushion that has allowed people to move ahead. But there's only so long you can rob Peter to pay Paul, and it's clear sufficient funds will be needed to replace these resources," explains a spokeswoman.

Megan Rowling
AlertNet journalist