Darfur ex-combatants discharged

Hundreds of former combatants in Darfur, western Sudan, have been discharged in a process that targets 5,000 members of various fighting groups, the AU–UN Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) said. The discharge took place from 22-24 November, in El Fasher town.

The ex-fighters, including women and the disabled, were disarmed in July 2008. They included fighters from Sudanese Armed Forces, People’s Defence Forces, and the Sudan Liberation Army. They each received US$150 from the Sudanese government.

The militia groups are also believed to have a large number of child soldiers, according to Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict. Speaking to reporters in Khartoum on 25 November, she said the number of child recruits in armed movements such as Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the Janjawid and Chadian armed forces, was said to be significant.

There was also active recruitment in Darfur. However, the signatories to the Darfur peace process, including the Sudan Liberation Army/Free Will, JEM/Peace wing and SLA/Abu Ghasim, had agreed to discuss how to discourage recruitment. “Even within the armed forces of Sudan, there is now a child protection unit, whose purpose is to ensure that children are not recruited,” the UN representative added.

Non-Arab Darfur refugees alloowed to stay in Britain

Darfur aid worker and peacekeeper security – 16 statistics

Photo: Heba Aly/IRIN

A UNAMID vehicle patrols near Tawila, North Darfur (file photo)

A Darfur security scorecard: figures for 2009 from OCHA (as of end-August 2009):

• Seven national humanitarian staff and three UNAMID staff have been killed.

• 12 humanitarian staff and 10 UNAMID staff have been wounded or injured.
• 11 humanitarians (seven international) have been kidnapped.
• 26 humanitarians and three UNAMID staff have been physically or sexually assaulted.
• 18 humanitarians and 11 UNAMID staff have been abducted during carjackings.
• 44 humanitarians and 12 UNAMID staff have been arrested or temporarily detained by the Government of Sudan.
• 64 humanitarian vehicles and 31 UNAMID vehicles have been hijacked or stolen.
• There have been 103 assaults or break-ins on humanitarian agency premises, and 22 on UNAMID premises.

War is Boring: Peacekeeping General’s Dangerous Darfur Pronouncement

On the eve of his retirement on Aug. 26, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur, declared an end to the war in Sudan’s southern province. “As of today, I would not say there is a war going on in Darfur,” Agwai, a Nigerian, said at a press conference in Khartoum. Agwai’s joint U.N.-African Union force, deployed in 2007, numbers around 15,000 soldiers and police.

“Militarily there is not much” going on in Darfur, Agwai said. “What you have is security issues more now. Banditry . . . people trying to resolve issues over water and land at a local level. But real war as such, I think we are over that.”

Agwai’s comments sparked a firestorm of criticism from aid workers and analysts who have labored to draw international attention, and intervention, to the six-year-old Darfur crisis. Fighting between Khartoum-backed Arab fighters and the ethnic Africans who inhabit Darfur has, since 2003, claimed as many as 300,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

But Darfur represents just one facet of a broader range of overlapping conflicts over race, religion and resources in Sudan and neighboring Chad and Central Africa Republic. All told, some 2.5 million people have been displaced across the region, and hundreds still die every month.

At worst, Agwai’s pronouncement is dangerously misleading, for it emphasizes possibly reduced levels of violence in Darfur, while ignoring the ongoing crises along the province’s edges — crises that could easily escalate and spread back into Darfur.

At best, Agwai is nearly two years late. In Darfur, “mass killings haven’t gone on in 18 months,” Don Steinberg, deputy president for policy for International Crisis Group, based in Brussels, told World Politics Review. “Most of the deaths occurred early in that process” of ethnic cleansing in the province. The U.N.-AU peacekeeping force, called UNAMID, deployed after the initial violence had subsided.

But even as the bloodletting in Darfur subsided, the broader conflict in Central Africa only spread. Now both more complex and more difficult to resolve, it could potentially result in thousands of fatalities, every year, for many years to come. Eastern Chad alone “is a powder keg with potential to destabilize the entire country as well as neighboring states and worsen the already dire humanitarian situation,” Crisis Group concluded in an April report. “Local conflicts based on resource scarcity have been exacerbated by national and regional political manipulation.”

The ethnic tensions that fueled the Darfur fighting has metastasized, as ethnic-based rebel groups across the region have gained the quiet, unofficial sponsorship of governments in Chad, Sudan and Central African Republic. Worsening shortages of water and land have led to inter-tribal fighting — fighting that has drawn in rebel groups and deepened their ties to aggrieved communities.

Meanwhile, political stalemate has prevented any diplomatic solution. The biggest Darfuri rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, has refused to join peace talks. This spring, the International Criminal Court indicted Sudanese President Omar Bashir for war crimes in Darfur, but the indictment is “leading nowhere,” Steinberg said. That impasse, he added, delays any answer to the “fundamental question of peace versus justice” in Central Africa.

Steinberg dismisses Agwai’s comments as politically motivated. “It’s just a general leaving at a time of a temporary lull and trying to put the best possible face on it that he can.”

But Agwai’s spin might have deadly consequences. After years of campaigning, aid workers, diplomats and peacekeeping advocates are finally enjoying a small measure of world interest in Central Africa’s plight. “Save Darfur” campaigns in the U.S. and Europe have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for relief work. Agwai’s peacekeepers deployed in 2007. The next year, the E.U. sponsored a small peacekeeping force for eastern Chad. Around the same time, the U.S. military established a new Africa Command and began flying more air supply missions in support of peacekeepers in Central Africa and elsewhere.

“We saw such difficulty in drawing up the [Darfur peacekeeping] mission,” Steinberg said. “It’s still not where it should be,” he added. Premature declarations from prominent officials might undermine existing political support for UNAMID and other peacekeeping and aid efforts. “Now all those people on the U.N. Security Council who never really wanted the mission to begin with . . . are saying maybe it’s time to draw down.”

Enthusiasm for intervention in Central Africa was already teetering before Agwai’s announcement, owing in part to the global economic crisis that has squeezed military and aid budgets. In July, the U.N.’s World Food Program warned that its Humanitarian Air Service — the small fleet of planes and helicopters that transports aid workers around conflict zones — was in danger of being grounded, owing to a $120-million funding shortfall for 2009. Air operations in Chad would end unless $7 million became available, WFP said.

With Agwai’s dangerous declaration of peace, other efforts aimed at stabilizing Central Africa could also be in peril.

David Axe is an independent correspondent, a World Politics Review contributing editor, and the author of “War Bots.” He blogs at War is Boring. His WPR column, War is Boring, appears every Wednesday.

Q+A-Is Sudan’s Darfur no longer at war?

By Andrew Heavens

KHARTOUM, Aug 28 (Reuters) – The departing commander of the U.N./African union peacekeeping force in Sudan’s Darfur region this week said the area was no longer in a state of war.

The comments sparked criticism from Darfur rebels, who warned they were planning new attacks, and from activists, who said Martin Luther Agwai had misrepresented the situation.

Here are some questions and answers about Darfur:

WHY IS DARFUR IMPORTANT?

U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes estimates up to 300,000 have died in the Darfur conflict and nearly 3 million people have been displaced. The conflict threatens peace between Sudan and neighbouring Chad and has destabilised Sudan at a time when the fragile 2005 peace deal that ended its two-decade north-south civil war is under pressure again due to disputes over land and oil.

HAS THE DARFUR CONFLICT ENDED?

The levels of violence and attacks in Darfur have fallen since the mass killings of 2003 and 2004. But that does not mean the conflict is over.

Since January, the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) clashed with Sudan’s army in and around the southern town of Muhajiriya in February; in settlements close to North Darfur’s border with Chad in May; and most recently around Darfur’s eastern boundary in early August.

Sudan’s government maintains its military presence; JEM has heavily armed forces, while other rebel groups, predominantly factions of the insurgent Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), continue to hold territory in Darfur. The Darfur crisis still had a serious impact on people on the ground.

The United Nations says 137,819 people were driven from their homes by fighting in Darfur in the first six months of this year, on top of the 2.7 million already in camps.

WHAT IS THE CURRENT LEVEL OF VIOLENCE?

The joint U.N./African Union representative in Darfur, Rodolphe Adada, said some 2,000 people died in violent incidents in Darfur from the start of 2008 to March this year — an average of around 130 a month.

Statistics collected online by Sudan expert Alex de Waal suggest 40 people were killed in July and just 16 in June. Both sets of figures are challenged by activists who say the undermanned UNAMID peacekeeping force is too thinly spread to witness and report all clashes.

A significant proportion of the recent deaths have come in fighting between rival Arab tribes over water and land rights. Though not related to the Darfur uprising, the weapons that have flooded the area have exacerbated these traditional disputes.

WHY HAS THE DEATH TOLL FALLEN?

In the early days of the fighting, rebel groups worked together to mount coordinated attacks on government targets. But that cooperation disappeared as rebel groups splintered, often along tribal lines.

Analysts say many SLA factions are simply too small and divided to mount serious campaigns and have concentrated on securing existing positions.

UNAMID’s Agwai said even JEM now lacked the manpower to hold territory on its own after successful attacks.

In this year’s engagements in Muhajiriya and Umm Baru, JEM withdrew after early advances; it says voluntarily to protect civilians. A level of inertia has set in on all sides of the conflict which has now dragged on without resolution for longer than World War Two.

In many areas, Sudan’s government and rebel groups have simply reached a stalemate. Peacekeepers can take some of the credit for the lower figures, particularly through their patrols and presence in displacement camps. Civilians took shelter around UNAMID bases during the worst of this year’s fighting.

The current rainy season, which wipes out roads from June to September, may also be behind the current lull.

WHAT COULD REIGNITE THE FIGHTING?

The worst threat could come from neighbouring Chad. The Darfur conflict, originally launched by rebels pressing Khartoum for better representation and development, has become entangled in N’Djamena’s convoluted political scene.

Most analysts accept that Sudan and Chad have been fighting a sporadic proxy war in recent years, with Chad’s political elite supporting and funding their ethnic kinsmen among the leadership of JEM.

Any overt war between Sudan and Chad would pour fresh cash and conflict over the border into Darfur. There may well be a resurgence of violence after the rainy season, as both JEM and Khartoum try and maximise territorial gains ahead of currently stalled negotiations in Qatar.

WHAT COULD HAPPEN NEXT?

Khartoum will wring out every ounce of propaganda it can out of Agwai’s statements. State media have already been misquoting him saying peace has returned to Darfur and Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has given the Nigerian general a medal. Rebels may try and prove him wrong by launching a token attack.

The real test of Agwai’s line will come in the months ahead. If JEM and Sudan’s government end up signing some sort of ceasefire and peace agreement in Doha, then the general will be remembered for his prescience. If not, his comments will go down as another of Darfur’s false dawns. (Editing by Jon Hemming)

US military lauds Rwanda’s Darfur mission

By Edwin Musoni

A visiting 21-man delegation of Senior US Military officers has praised the achievements of the Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF), particularly the force’s peacekeeping efforts, saying that Rwanda is contributing greatly to the restoration of security on the continent.

Rwanda sent troops to the joint African Union/United Nations Hybrid mission in Darfur.

The mission was authorized by Security Council resolution 1769 of 31 July 2007. The Council, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, authorized UNAMID to take necessary action to support the implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement.

UNAMID formally began operations on 31 December 2007.
The Americans, who are in the country on  a three-day study trip, said that RDF has proven to be a force committed to putting the interests of the people first and pledged even further partnership between the RDF and the US Army.

Addressing the press shortly after meeting with RDF’s senior officials, the leader of the delegation, retired Air Force General Joseph W Ashy, said that the US Army is proud of the progress made by the Rwandan army.

The group consists of officers at the rank of Brigadier General, Senior Colonels and 3-Star Generals from the US Army National Defence University.

“We have been so much inspired by the RDF. Our mission here is to look at what the RDF offers to the US and help Rwanda,” said Ashy. “Particularly we are here to look at how we can work together in future.”

The US Ambassador to Rwanda, Stuart Symington, said the visit to Rwanda is a special one since they chose to visit Africa and particularly Rwanda, which implies that the two countries have close partnership.

Air Force Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Charles Muhire who hosted the delegation at the RDF headquarters, said that he presented to the delegation the policies, achievements and plans of the RDF.

“The cooperation between the two forces (RDF and the US Army) makes the world a better place since both forces are determined to peace building,” said Muhire.

Meanwhile, before heading to the RDF headquarters, the delegation visited Gisozi Genocide Memorial site and condemned the Rwandan genocide and the international community for not stopping it.

Ashy praised the current government for restoring peace in the country and reconciling its nationals.

The delegation’s visit is part of the military cooperation arrangement between the US Army and the RDF.

The US army has also facilitated the RDF Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) as well as other military training arrangements.

Recently, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of Lt. Gen. Patrick Nyamvumba to head the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur starting Sept. 1.

Nyamvumba, will succeed Gen. Martin Luther Agwai of Nigeria who has served as force commander since the joint peacekeeping mission was established in 2007. The UNAMID mission is to try to help end the war that began in 2003 when rebel groups in Darfur took up arms against the government, complaining of discrimination and neglect.

U.N. officials say up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes, with many now living in camps.

Darfur rebels sign deal with Sudan opposition party

(Reuters) – Darfur rebels signed an accord with one of Sudan’s main opposition parties in Cairo on Wednesday, agreeing to push for a new transitional government, both sides said on Friday, a move that will infuriate Khartoum.

The rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which attacked Khartoum last year, and the opposition Umma party told Reuters the deal was a “declaration of principles” and shared ideas and did not amount to a political or military alliance.

But the sight of Umma, led by Sudan’s last democratically elected Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, sitting with insurgents will be deeply unsettling to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, currently beset by a string of political crises.

JEM commander Suleiman Sandal told Reuters the group would continue its struggle against Khartoum, but was also interested in finding ways to unseat the government through politics. “We agreed that our country is in danger with many problems, and that those problems should have a national solution,” he said.

“We are still separate organizations. We are working to achieve one strategic target, but there are differences in means. The one target is to work against the government.”

The agreement comes almost 20 years to the day after Bashir overthrew Mahdi’s government in a bloodless coup in 1989.

A new government would be include all political groups in Sudan, including Bashir’s National Congress Party and Darfur’s main armed groups, to pave the way for delayed elections, JEM and Umma said.

Sudan is led by a north-south coalition government set up in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended more than two decades of civil war between the country’s Muslim north and its mainly Christian south.

Under the deal, Sudan’s national parliament is dominated by Bashir’s National Congress Party, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), led by south Sudan’s president.

“ILLEGITIMATE”

Umma and JEM leaders said Sudan’s government would become “illegitimate” on July 9, the date that national elections were originally due to start under the CPA.

That will leave a “constitutional vacuum that can only be addressed through a national government,” Umma vice-president Fadlalla Burma Nasir told Reuters.

Sudan’s promised elections have been delayed until April 2010. Both the NCP and the SPLM have accepted the delay and said their government should continue until the new poll date.

Nasir said Sudan’s president had no reason to be unsettled by the accord. “All we have done is sit down together. This is not an agreement for war. This is an agreement for peace.

“Sudan’s problems are too big for any individual, any party to solve. We have to open the door to all the people who carry arms. We have to sit down with them… We can not neglect JEM.”

JEM was among rebels who took up arms against Sudan’s government in 2003, accusing it of neglecting the region. Khartoum mobilized mostly Arab militias to crush the uprising.

Discussions between JEM and Khartoum in Qatar, designed to pave the way to peace talks, were suspended last month.

Under the JEM and Umma accord, both sides said they supported the U.N. decision to refer the Darfur conflict to the International Criminal Court — although Nasir said Umma still opposed the court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant against Bashir. They also rejected the findings of a recent census.

No one was available to comment from the government.

Peace in Darfur – one step forward, two steps back

(IRIN) – Rebels in Sudan’s Darfur region are showing signs of unity, but it has not brought their region any closer to a comprehensive peace, analysts said, as the government wrapped up another round of unsuccessful discussions with the most active rebel group.

Since the indictment on 4 March of President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes, the Justice and Equality Movement claims to have made big strides towards uniting fractious rebels by bringing other groups under its umbrella.

“We are quite hopeful that by mid-June [at the latest], we will have one organisation,” Gebreil Ibrahim, JEM’s economic adviser and brother of the group’s leader, Khalil, told IRIN. “Now we have started calling it the New JEM.”

What flared up in 2003 as a conflict between the government and two main rebel groups – the JEM and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, or SLM/A – over marginalisation and distribution of wealth and power, has resulted in fighting between splintered rebel groups, increased banditry and ethnic clashes.

“Unity by attrition”

But Darfur’s rebellion has come “full circle” and is once again re-emerging as two main groups – the JEM and the faction of the SLM/A led by Abdel Wahid Mohammed Nur, according to Theodore Murphy of the Geneva-based Humanitarian Dialogue Centre, which has helped facilitate negotiations between rebels and the government.

“To a degree, it’s down to efforts within the movements to unite, but also because the smaller groups are falling apart and being absorbed into the larger,” he told IRIN, calling it “unity by attrition”.

Last month, Suleiman Jamous, an influential commander with the Unity faction of the SLM/A, announced that he, 30 commanders and 500 soldiers were joining the JEM, virtually decapitating the SLA-Unity faction.

New recruits

The JEM said hundreds more soldiers from various factions of the SLA and other rebel groups had also joined.

Following the government’s expulsion of 13 major international aid agencies from Sudan – most of whom were serving the 2.7 million people living in camps in Darfur – hundreds of civilians have also joined JEM ranks, according to spokesman Ahmed Hussain Adam.

For the first time, Hussain said, members of Arab groups traditionally aligned with the government – the Beni Halba, the Rizeigat and the Misseriya – were joining the JEM in their hundreds.

Nur’s faction of the SLM/A is similarly “dabbling” with bringing in former splinter groups, Murphy said.

But despite these strides, a comprehensive peace deal remains elusive in the semi-arid western region of Sudan, where as many as 300,000 people are estimated to have died and another 4.7 million depend on aid to survive.

Negotiations

The JEM was the only player in a February attempt at restarting peace talks with the government, at which it signed a “goodwill agreement” to exchange prisoners and facilitate the flow of aid to Darfur. Renewed discussions beginning 6 May on implementing that agreement came to a close in the Qatari capital Doha last week with no tangible results.

Photo: Derk Segaar/IRIN

Fighting between splintered rebel groups, increased banditry and ethnic clashes have devastated Darfur – file photo

While the return to two main rebel groups is a “step forward”, Murphy said both groups refused to negotiate together, so “it may not get us that much closer to a comprehensive process”.

Others fear the JEM can never be the only unifying force, as some groups will always oppose its Islamist nature. Many analysts say its recent popularity is due to the money it offers new recruits. It has also engaged in various battles over the last few months, in an effort, analysts said, to prove its military strength and thus increase its leverage in negotiations.

Focus on JEM

“Unless the structural approach that has been taken to the Doha talks is opened to include other movements …comprehensive peace agreements in Darfur will not be possible,” said Paula Roque, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a Pretoria-based think-tank.

On 15 March, the SLM’s Unity and Juba factions, as well as the SLM faction led by Khamis Abdallah Abakar, the breakaway JEM faction led by Idris Azraq and the United Revolutionary Forces Front, signed an agreement in Libya “to create a unified front and participate in the peace negotiations”, according to the latest Darfur report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

This small alliance was not present during the recent discussions between the JEM and the government, which ended on 12 May and will resume on 27 May.

“The special relationship the US and the Sudan government are building up with the JEM, prioritising [leader] Khalil Ibrahim’s movement in peace talks, risks backfiring unless balanced by other contacts, especially with Arabs,” writes Julie Flint on the blog, Making sense of Darfur.

The Darfur conflict pits mostly non-Arab rebels against the Arab-dominated government and has exacerbated tensions between nomadic Arabs and settled Africans in the region. While the Africans have suffered most in the conflict, Arabs have also been victims.

“The peace process has always been between the government on one side and the predominantly non-Arab rebel movements on the other,” Flint writes. As the JEM becomes the main negotiating partner, and Arabs continue to be excluded from the process, “the parameters of the peace process are shrinking rather than expanding, as they must”.

Representing the Fur

Who represents the region’s native group, the Fur, has become another problem. Nur, the Fur’s rebel leader and one of the founders of the rebellion, refuses to negotiate with the government until the violence in Darfur stops. Other rebel groups say he has been averse to any co-operation with them as well.

“Abdel Wahid [Nur] has essentially painted himself into a corner,” said Colin Thomas-Jensen, a policy adviser at the Washington-based Enough Project. The JEM’s political and military surge has led to increasing discontent with Nur’s leadership, “but there’s no one to fill that vacuum.

Photo: Derk Segaar/IRIN

Rebels in south Darfur: An analyst says Darfur’s rebellion has come “full circle” and is once again re-emerging as two main groups, the JEM and a faction of the SLM/A – file photo

“The Fur, being the largest group in Darfur and being the largest group affected by this war, need strong representation in any peace process. The consensus view among negotiators and mediators has developed that Abdel Wahid will not provide that… Finding a Fur representation has become an obsession for many within the mediation.”

Thus while some degree of rebel unity is a step forward for Darfur, increased politicisation of the conflict and the lack of representation of some groups continue to plague peace efforts. Meanwhile, analysts and civil society alike have grown “tired” of the constant making and breaking of alliances among the rebels.

For Ibrahim Mudawi, chairman of the Sudan Social Development Organization, Sudan’s largest NGO, which is active in Darfur, these latest rebel mergers are insignificant.

“All of them [the rebel groups] are irrelevant. All are fragmented. They are sitting on smaller and smaller constituencies,” he said. “There is no one having a vision or plan.”

AmeriCares and International Medical Corps Partner to Bring Lifesaving Aid to Darfur Refugees

AmeriCares, a nonprofit international relief organization, is sending an airlift carrying more than $1.4 million worth of lifesaving medicines and medical supplies to its partner, International Medical Corps, to help Darfur refugees in Chad.

The medical aid will help people in the refugee camps who are suffering from serious injuries, infections, diarrhea and chronic diseases, in addition to pre-natal vitamins for pregnant women. The shipment will leave AmeriCares headquarters in Stamford on Thursday, March 26 before continuing on to Chad. The airlift is part of AmeriCares and International Medical Corps’ continued commitment to relieving suffering by improving access to medicines around the world, especially in areas like Darfur and neighboring Chad.

“AmeriCares is steadfast in its resolve to do everything we can to help the innocent victims of the ongoing conflict in Darfur,” said Curt Welling, AmeriCares President & CEO, who has led the delivery of aid to the region since 2004. “I’ve witnessed the tragedy families in Chad and Darfur faced and have seen the impact humanitarian aid has on helping to restore health to the region. Protecting the world’s most vulnerable people is at the very heart of humanitarian aid and the mission of AmeriCares.”

Since 2004, AmeriCares has delivered six shipments containing more than 50 tons of critical medicines and medical supplies to Chad that have been valued at nearly $3 million. AmeriCares has partnered with International Medical Corps over the last two years to provide donated medicines for their health programs serving refugees and other vulnerable populations in Chad, Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia, Lebanon and Iraq. In Chad, International Medical Corps currently serves a population of nearly 225,000, including approximately 75,000 refugees, and provides primary care to the camps, as well as health programs for hospitals.

“We are profoundly appreciative of AmeriCares’ generous contribution to our humanitarian efforts in Chad,” says Nancy Aossey, President & CEO of International Medical Corps. “Their unwavering support allows us to go about our work of saving lives and creating healthy futures for thousands of men, women and children who otherwise would have to go without critical medicines and health care they need to survive and thrive.”

About AmeriCares:

AmeriCares is a nonprofit international disaster relief and humanitarian aid organization which provides immediate response to emergency medical needs and supports long-term humanitarian assistance programs around the world.  Since it was established in 1982, AmeriCares has distributed more than $8 billion in humanitarian aid to 137 countries.  For more information, log onto www.AmeriCares.org.

About International Medical Corps:

Since its inception 25 years ago, International Medical Corps’ mission has been to relieve the suffering of those impacted by war, natural disaster and disease, by delivering vital health care services that focus on training. This approach of helping people help themselves is critical to returning devastated populations to self-reliance. For more information visit our website at www.imcworldwide.org.

Lost aid expertise hard to replace – UN

(IRIN) – The loss of expertise following the expulsion or closure of 16 aid agencies cannot be replaced in the short run and exacerbated the plight of displaced people in Darfur, the UN warned.

Aid activity in Darfur, western Sudan, was a network whose operations will be affected by the expulsion of 13 international agencies and the closure of three NGOs, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said in New York.

Photo: OCHA VMU

The three Darfur states showing areas where some relief agencies were shut dow

The closures were announced shortly after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar el-Bashir on 4 March on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bashir denies the charges.

“About 1.1 million people are receiving food for March and April thanks to an ad hoc and one-off distribution by local food committees,” Ameerah Haq, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, said in Khartoum, announcing the findings of a joint assessment.

At the same time, the leader of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, Abdel Wahid Al-Nur, said he had received “alarming reports of the situation” in Darfur. Local people, he told The Sudan Tribune, did not trust aid workers sent by the government.

Ahmed Hussein Adam, spokesman for the Justice and Equality Movement, said the “situation is very bad in the camps”; four children had died in the past two days of malnutrition-related complications in Shangil Tobaya camp, North Darfur.

The assessment was conducted from 11 to 19 March in all three Darfur states by UN and Sudanese government officials.

“By the beginning of May, as the hunger gap approaches, and unless the World Food Programme has found partners able to take on the mammoth distribution task, these people will not receive their rations,” it stated.

Sudan has said the gap left by the expulsions could be filled by national relief organisations, but the UN and other international aid agencies doubt that long-term capacity exists.

Mahdi Qutbi, a senior member of the ruling National Congress Party, had said more than 200 Sudanese organisations would fill the void, including the Sudanese Red Crescent Society, which would provide food, healthcare and water.

Gaps

According to the findings, massive gaps remain for the 4.7 million conflict-affected Darfuris, in food, health, non-food items and shelter, water, sanitation and hygiene.

Clean water will become a key issue within a month, Haq said. More than 850,000 people are being supplied with potable water by the Sudanese government, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and national NGOs.

However, within four weeks, existing funds for spare parts and fuel for water pumps will be depleted, while sanitary facilities will need urgent maintenance to prevent disease outbreaks.

Healthcare will also face severe shortages soon, with salaries of the government staff secure only until the end of April. Some 650,000 people do not have access to full healthcare.

In terms of shelter, 692,400 people waiting for materials before the rains begin will not receive them unless the UN Joint Logistics Centre finds partners to carry out the distributions and gains access to existing distribution lists, she added.

Haq said the government had cooperated with the UN during the assessment “in an open and constructive atmosphere”, adding that “all sides recognised the challenges and were committed to finding solutions”.

She called for the lifting of restrictions on aid agencies: “Prevailing bureaucratic impediments should be lifted and security conditions should not complicate issues such as access if the people of Darfur are not to end up facing the most serious upheaval in years.”

Security fears

“The report is grim reading, but it is not unexpected: we knew the problems facing Darfur were horrendous,” said an aid worker in Darfur, on condition of anonymity.

Security fears have since continued to increase. The joint UN–African Union peacekeeping force to Darfur reported on 24 March that several attacks against aid workers had taken place in recent days.

These included an ambush by armed men on camels on 21 March on four Sudanese staff working in West Darfur for the Fellowship for African Relief (FAR) and Tearfund. One was beaten, another robbed. On 23 March, another Sudanese FAR staff member was shot dead in Kango Haraza, West Darfur.

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