POLITICS-SUDAN: Aid Workers in Darfur Try to Manage the Unpredictable

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Feb 4 2005 (IPS) - In New York this week, members of the United Nations Security Council busied themselves with a debate about whether genocide is taking place in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.

For those directly involved in bringing aid to the area, however, the day-to-day struggle of getting food and supplies to people was probably of more immediate concern.

“The situation is fluid. The lack of security will have an impact on the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people,” Roshan Khadivi, external relations officer in Darfur for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told IPS by telephone from the war-ravaged region.

“We are moving forward, but everyday is unpredictable. We are just watching the situation very closely,” he added.

About 150 people were reportedly killed in one of the latest attacks in Darfur, which took place last month in the southern town of Shangeltobayi. Hundreds of people were also displaced in the incident.

“Some of the aid organisations have pulled out because of similar violence and this has created a big gap.We are working with other counterparts – but this means no regular access to camps,” Khadivi noted. He said UNICEF was currently managing 12 camps in northern and western Darfur, and providing aid to more than two million people.

Late last year, the United Kingdom-based Save the Children organisation terminated its operations in Darfur after four aid workers in the region were killed.

The conflict in Darfur began in 2003 when rebels from the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement and the Justice and Equality Movement took up arms in protest against alleged marginalization of the region by officials in Khartoum.

Government’s response was to attack communities from the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa tribes, to deprive the rebels of a support base. Arab militias known as the Janjaweed (“men on horseback”) were also turned into a proxy force against the communities. Prior to these events, Darfur had witnessed disputes over land and water resources between nomadic Arabs and more settled groups.

The campaign in western Sudan has reportedly included mass killings, rapes and the destruction of property. According to U.N. sources, over 70,000 people have died in the conflict – while up to two million have been forced out of their homes.

The United Nations has made repeated efforts to end the violence in Darfur, as yet to little avail. A U.N. commission also investigated claims by the United States and others that the killings in Darfur amount to genocide.

The commission’s report, issued this week, stopped short of agreement with Washington on this issue. However, the commission has recommended that those responsible for human rights violations in the area should be tried by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

This idea is opposed by U.S. officials who have refused to sign up for the court, citing fears that it might be used to mount politically-motivated prosecutions against American citizens. Instead, Washington has proposed setting up a special tribunal to try crimes committed in Darfur. This court, to be managed by the United Nations and African Union (AU), would be based in Tanzania.

Efforts by IPS to get comment from Sudanese officials on claims of genocide in Darfur were unsuccessful.

For its part, the AU is mediating in talks between Khartoum and the Darfur rebels. These discussions adjourned in the Nigerian capital of Abuja in December 2004, with little in the way of progress.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current AU chairman, has now called for a meeting later this month in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, so that discussions can continue. Gabon, Libya and Chad will also send delegates to the meeting.

“The next political round of talks has to start soon. We are discussing with the African Union and the first meeting may be end of February,” Jan Pronk, the U.N. special envoy to Sudan, told IPS towards the end of last month in Rumbek – the administrative capital of southern Sudan.

“I want peace in Darfur in 2005. The government of national unity will have to take the lead through organising a national conference to discuss this issue. The conference should be held in the first half of the year in order not to lose political momentum,” he added.

The national unity government referred to by Pronk is the product of years of negotiations between Khartoum and another rebel group, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, to end fighting in southern Sudan. This war was the longest-running conflict in Africa until it came to an end with a peace agreement signed on Jan. 9 in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

The SPLM/A had been fighting for political and religious freedom for southern Sudan, which has long resisted control by the Muslim north. This conflict led to the death of more than two million people and the displacement of over four million others.