During an official visit to the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur, the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso and the Commissioner for Development Louis Michel announced the allocation of a supplementary package of 40 million euros for emergency food aid in the bid to prevent the death by famine of hundreds of thousands of victims of what Barroso himself called “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the history of the world”. 26 million euros will be used to give new impetus to the efforts of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to “respond to the growing nutritional needs in the areas in crisis”; the rest of the funding will cover the cost of protection of aid and humanitarian personnel and improve air services for humanitarian relief to permit links with areas that are otherwise inaccessible (the main problem remains in fact that of the risk to humanitarian convoys bound for the stricken populations). Since 2004, through its Office for Humanitarian Aid (ECHO), the EU has furnished almost 350 million euros in aid to Darfur for projects that are also being run in cooperation with the African Union, the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, UNO and some aid organizations.
