Sudan: International community warned that militias are destroying food and water sources by IRIN News/ UN News / New York Times UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs 11:26am 8th Jul, 2004   9 July 2004    Calling for immediate action to stop armed militias destroying food and water sources in the violence-wracked Darfur region of Sudan, a United Nations rapporteur today urged the UN Commission on Human Rights to convene a special session on the situation in Darfur.    Jean Ziegler, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, said he was deeply concerned by the rebels' destruction of resources in western Darfur's Jabal Marrah area.    He said he was also disturbed that the Sudanese Government is urging Darfur's massive internally displaced population - estimated at more than one million - to return to their homes.    Noting that the right to food is protected under international law, Mr. Ziegler said Khartoum wanted to send people back to their homes even though militias have either destroyed, damaged or looted crops, agricultural areas, livestock and drinking water installations. He urged the Sudanese Government to lift any restrictions on humanitarian operations in Darfur, where Government forces, allied militias and two rebel groups have been fighting since early last year. He said they must guarantee the safety of aid workers and civilians.    Mr. Ziegler also voiced concern that international donors have not provided enough funds to match the scale of the humanitarian crisis, which senior UN officials have recently described as the world's worst.    "In two weeks, the rainy season will cut off access to many of the communities in west Darfur, the region worst affected by the conflict," he said. "The rainy season and flooding will also give rise to diarrhoeal diseases and malarial incidence, which all contribute to malnutrition and mortality rates."Mr. Ziegler said the Geneva-based Commission should hold a special session focusing on Darfur, a region roughly the size of France.    In a separate development, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, discussed events in Darfur with Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail last week during the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Eight UN human rights monitors are being deployed to Darfur to examine grave violations of human rights, war crimes and other abuses.    July 9, 2004    "His Patience Fading, US Secretary of State Collin Powell is demanding Sudan Improvements",    by Christopher Marquis.(The New York Times)    Signaling impatience with Sudan's rulers, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Thursday demanded "dramatic improvements on the ground right now" in the Darfur region, where armed militias have routed more than a million Sudanese from their homes.    Mr. Powell, who visited Darfur in western Sudan last week, warned that the United Nations Security Council would act against the Khartoum government - and the Janjaweed militias it controls - if it fails to halt the violence.    "Despite the promises that have been made, we have yet to see these dramatic improvements," Mr. Powell told a panel on African policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Only actions, not words, can win the race against death in Darfur. And we will not rest. We will continue to apply pressure."    Mr. Powell's message followed a similar warning to Sudan issued Wednesday at the Security Council by John C. Danforth, the new American ambassador to the United Nations. The Bush administration has estimated that as many as 300,000 displaced Sudanese will die by year-end despite major infusions of American and other foreign aid.    Sudanese officials promised last week to send troops to Darfur to halt the militia attacks, which Mr. Powell has described as an "ethnic cleansing" of black Africans by the mostly Arab government. The officials pledged to disarm the Janjaweed immediately and to deploy the police to protect displaced people.    In an agreement with Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, Sudan's foreign minister, Mostafa Osman Ismail, said the government would send in 6,000 soldiers and police officers and allow foreign monitoring. He also pledged to remove obstacles, including visa delays, for foreign relief groups.    NAIROBI, 7 Jul 2004 (IRIN) - Armed men, some in military uniform, have continued to attack humanitarian convoys in western Sudan's Darfur region, according to a UN spokeswoman.    "Military personnel, uniformed men and 'unidentified persons on camels' had stopped and attacked clearly marked convoys of humanitarian workers in the west and north of Sudan's volatile Darfur region," UN News quoted Marie Okabe as telling journalists in New York on Tuesday.    It added that both the Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan Liberation Army had increased the number of road checkpoints in Darfur, thereby slowing down the flow of humanitarian assistance for the estimated two million people affected by the conflict.    In Southern Darfur, civilians were still being displaced by tribal fighting and attacks by government-backed Janjawid militias, which have been broadly accused of perpetrating atrocities in Darfur.    UN News noted that the reports followed an agreement between UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was in the Sudan last week, and the Sudanese government for Khartoum to disarm the Janjawid and remove all obstacles to relief efforts.    It quoted staff of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur State, as reporting the arrival "in the last few days" in a nearby camp for internally displaced persons [IDPs] of more than 100 people "telling harrowing tales of attacks by the Janjawid and Sudanese government forces". They had said "their villages were first hit by bombs from airplanes and helicopter gunships, before armed men arrived in trucks and on horses and camels and killed their relatives and neighbours, raped women, stole their livestock and possessions and burned their homes".    A UNHCR spokeswoman, Jennifer Pagonis, briefing reporters in Geneva, expressed concern over the plight of about 1,500 IDPs who were reportedly beaten by police and soldiers to forcibly remove them from a camp near Nyala, which was supposedly situated on private land.    She added that the rainy season had made it very difficult for UNHCR to reach tens of thousands of would-be refugees remaining near the border with Chad, because "many roads have become impassable as the rains have turned otherwise dry river beds into flooded water-courses".    Fighting between the government and rebels, which first broke out in Darfur early last year, has displaced about two million people, with up to 200,000 seeking refuge in neighbouring Chad. The UN and other aid agencies have described the conflict in Darfur as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis".    7 July 2004    Sudan: Annan urges Security Council to adopt resolution on Darfur crisis (UN News)    Secretary-General Kofi Annan today urged the Security Council to adopt a resolution as soon as possible to help bring an end to the deadly violence and ethnic displacement wracking Sudan's Darfur region, while the top United Nations humanitarian official described the relief effort as "a logistical nightmare."    In a private briefing by satellite link from Nairobi, Kenya, where he is continuing the African leg of an official trip, Mr. Annan informed the Council about what he observed during his visit last week to Sudan and neighbouring Chad.    He described the situation in Chad as "totally intolerable," according to UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, who accompanied Mr. Annan to Sudan and Chad, and briefed the Council separately in New York today.    The Secretary-General told the Council's 15 members that he wants a resolution as soon as possible - and with as much as concrete detail as possible - to help ensure that armed, government-allied Janjaweed militias stop attacking villages and killing and raping civilians, Mr. Egeland told reporters.    The Emergency Relief Coordinator also warned of a potentially massive death toll if Khartoum does not take steps to end the fighting with two rebel groups and to disarm and demobilize the mainly Arab militias.    "It is so vulnerable now that if there is an outbreak of renewed fighting, the whole programme of our humanitarian lifeline will fold immediately, and hundreds of thousands of people may die," he said.    Before Mr. Annan departed Sudan on Saturday, the Government and the UN issued a joint communiqué in which Khartoum pledged to undertake a series of measures, including disarming the militias, bringing the perpetrators of human rights abuses to justice and removing any obstacles to humanitarian access.    For months UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have complained of restrictions hampering their attempts to bring relief to Darfur's internally displaced, who are now estimated to have swelled in number to 1.2 million. Between 150,000 and 200,000 refugees have fled to Chad and at least 800,000 other people need emergency food aid.    Welcoming the promised removal of those obstacles, Mr. Egeland said that humanitarian workers still need better security and more funding to do their work. UN agencies and NGOs have reported this week that military officials have searched some aid workers and looted their possessions.    Funding also presents a problem. UN agencies have received less than $140 million of the $350 million they say is the minimum needed to provide food rations, clean water, sanitation and other relief supplies to 2 million people until at least the end of this year. Trucks, helicopters and airplanes to transport food are also required.    "It is a logistical nightmare for us to help them…[and] it would be ironic now, when we have access finally, that we would be unable to save lives because we only have 40 per cent of what we've asked for," Mr. Egeland said.    Meanwhile, humanitarian agencies say the depletion of firewood around the dozens of camps for internally displaced people in Darfur is forcing women to travel further away from the relative safety of the camps to collect wood for cooking. Many women say they are reluctant to travel far because of the threat of rapes and other violent assaults by the Janjaweed.    5 July 2004 (UN News)    As Secretary-General Kofi Annan ended his official visit to Sudan, the Khartoum Government agreed to a series of measures to improve the dire humanitarian situation, protect civilians and end fighting in the Darfur region, widely considered the site of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.    In a joint communiqué issued on 3 July, the Government and the UN warned that “catastrophic levels” of suffering could ensue if present conditions persist, and set up a joint High-level Implementation Mechanism to report on progress.    The Government agreed to resume political talks in Darfur “in the shortest possible time” to reach a comprehensive settlement. It undertook o deploy a “strong, credible and respected police force” in areas where internally displaced persons (IDPs) have fled attacks, and in other high-risk locations.    On human rights, Khartoum committed itself to “concrete measures” aimed at ending impunity and the immediate investigation of all abuses, with perpetrators brought to justice.    In May, two UN human rights reports found that the Janjaweed, bands of Arab fighters recruited or armed by the Sudanese Government as part of its fight against two rebel groups, committed murders, rapes and other crimes against Darfur's black African population.    The Government further pledged to allow the deployment of human rights monitors and to establish a “fair system, respectful of local tradition, that will allow abused women to bring charges against alleged perpetrators.”    During his trip eastern Chad the previous day, Mr. Annan met some of the 15,000 refugees from Darfur living at one of eight UN camps. They told of suffering abuses before fleeing for their lives. In Darfur itself on 1 July, he spoke with female IDPs who offered similar accounts.    By the agreement, the Government said it would suspend all restrictions for aid workers and permit freedom of movement throughout Darfur, while ending limits on “the importation and use of all humanitarian assistance materials, transport vehicles, aircraft and communications equipment.”    For its part, the UN said it would help implement Sudan's peace accords, aid the country's IDPs as well as refugees in Chad, and assist in the deployment of African Union (AU) ceasefire monitors.    NAIROBI, 6 Jul 2004 (IRIN)    Amnesty International (AI) has called on the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on the Sudanese government and militias allied to it, who Amnesty said were deemed to be responsible for many of the atrocities committed in western Darfur region.    In a report released on Friday, AI urged the UN to impose the arms embargo on the government and the Janjawid militia "until full respect for human rights can be ensured". The report, it added, was based on satellite images showing the scale of the destruction of villages in Darfur.    It was not immediately possible to get a comment from the Sudanese government on the AI report.    The London-based human rights watchdog welcomed a Security Council draft resolution proposed by the US calling on the Sudanese government to fulfil the commitment it had made publicly to cease military attacks in Darfur and to protect civilians.    "We have seen ample evidence that the Janjawid are armed, funded and supported by the Sudanese government. Therefore, any resolution for the suspension of transfers of arms used to commit human rights violations must be directed not only against militias, but also against the Sudan government. This suspension should be imposed immediately and should continue until human rights are secured," AI stressed.    AI said the satellite images of a small area in Western Darfur taken in March 2003 and May 2004, "vividly demonstrate the pattern of destruction of villages in Darfur by the Janjawid". In the photos, at least 155, or 44 per cent, of the villages show signs of having been burnt between March 2003 and May 2004.    It added that over the past 15 months it had interviewed hundreds of villagers who had fled from the area shown in the satellite images, and the experiences they had related "of death, destruction, rape and flight" had served to illustrate what the images depicted.    According to AI, the Council should adopt a resolution for the deployment of "human rights monitors in sufficient quantity and adequately resourced, with a clear mandate to investigate ongoing human rights violations in Darfur and the protection of civilians in particular in the IDP [internally displaced persons] camps, and to make its findings and recommendations public."    Meanwhile, the Sudanese government on Monday announced a number of steps it said would improve the situation in Darfur, according to government-controlled Sudanese TV.The measures, announced by Interior Minister Maj-Gen Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Husayn, include exemption from import duties of all humanitarian aid to Darfur, and the lifting of all taxes from agricultural produce coming from Darfur. The minister instructed Sudanese security forces to "strengthen security and ensure civilians are protected", as well as helping and facilitating the African Union monitoring team to be deployed in the region. He also instructed the Darfur state governments to "guarantee the flow of humanitarian aid and return the displaced and affected people to their regions".    3rd July, 2004    "UN Security Council and Government of Sudan must act to save lives in Darfur", (Refugees International)    Pressed by visits from US Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the government of Sudan has pledged to stop fighting and to improve humanitarian access in Darfur, where more than 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes by government-sponsored attacks.    Now the UN Security Council must act to compel the government in Khartoum to live up to its promises to end the death and displacement in Darfur in western Sudan. The U.S. is currently drafting a Security Council resolution designed to protect the people of Darfur. Although the action is months too late, the passage and enforcement of a strong UNSC resolution now could still save hundreds of thousands of lives and enable 1.2 million refugees and displaced people to return home. Such returns would reverse what US and UN officials have called “ethnic-cleansing,” a government backed effort to help Arab pastoralists drive African farmers from their lands.    A government-backed militia called the Janjaweed has used killing, rape, and the destruction of villages and crops to force farmers from their land, according to Sudanese refugees who have fled to Chad. At the same time the Khartoum government has restricted the flow of humanitarian workers and aid into Darfur. Confronted by Secretary Powell and Secretary General Annan, Sudan’s leaders have vowed to reign in the Janjaweed and increase humanitarian access to Darfur. Visit the related web page
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