Darfur Relief Efforts near collapse due to fading International Support by Jan Egeland, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator 11:28pm 21st Apr, 2006   May 19, 2006    Darfur Effort Said to Face Collapse, by Warren Hoge. (New York Times)    Jan Egeland, the chief United Nations aid coordinator, told the Security Council today that conditions in Darfur had deteriorated so drastically that the international assistance effort there faced collapse in weeks.    "The next few weeks will make or break," Mr. Egeland said, reporting on a trip he made last week to Sudan and Chad. "We can turn the corner towards reconciliation and reconstruction, or see an even worse collapse of our efforts to provide protection and relief to millions of people."    Among the immediate objectives he said had to be met were getting dissident groups to support a peace agreement that has been signed only by the government and the largest of three major rebel groups; providing immediate and substantial strengthening to the undermanned and underfinanced African Union mission now patrolling Darfur; taking concrete steps to integrate that force into a larger United Nations force; meeting international funding pledges for Darfur and re-establishing aid groups'' access that he said represented a lifeline for close to four million people.    On Tuesday, the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for strict observance by all groups of the shaky peace accord, which was adopted in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on May 5. The council also ordered a speedup of plans for the new United Nations force, which is expected to replace the existing 7,000-member African Union force with up to 20,000 troops by October.    The council directed the Sudanese government to let a United Nations assessment team into Darfur in a week, but Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan, said today that the Khartoum government had not yet granted that permission.    Mr. Egeland said the Sudanese government had told him it would now lift restrictions on besieged aid workers that he said had effectively ended relief activities in large parts of the area.    "The attacks against relief workers have been relentless and are threatening our operations in many areas," he said. "Our staff, compounds, trucks and vehicles are being targeted literally on a daily basis."    He confirmed reports that the conflict had spilled across the border into Chad, where he said relief workers were being shot at, their trucks hijacked and displaced persons camps left "utterly exposed." Only 25 percent of the $179 million needed for Chad had been funded, he said, and the situation had become so fraught for Sudanese refugees who fled there to escape fighting that 13,000 of them had recently crossed back into their own country.    On a positive note, he said that a stepping up in donations had decreased a funding shortfall from 60 percent to 80 percent and would enable the World Food Program to cancel some of the ration cuts it had imposed.    There still was an overall shortfall of $389 million for Darfur, he said, and the Persian Gulf states, the growing economies of Asia and unnamed European countries that had reduced their donations from a year ago were not doing enough.    20 April 2006 (UN News)    The disastrous combination of a worsening humanitarian situation, Government obstruction, rebel violence and weakened support of the international community has left relief operations in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region on the verge of breakdown, placing millions of people at risk, the top United Nations humanitarian official told the Security Council today.    “I think it’s a matter of weeks or months that we will have a collapse in many of our operations,” Jan Egeland, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, told reporters after his presentation to the Council on the crises in Darfur, northern Uganda and Chad, which followed a nine-day mission to those African countries.    “As I told the Security Council today, I don’t think the world has understood how bad it has become of late,” Mr. Egeland added, saying that 200,000 people were displaced in the last three or four months alone, on top of the 1.6 million already displaced. More than 3 million people are in need of daily humanitarian assistance, he said, with 210,000 of those requiring food urgently.    Despite the growing need, he said that the world was turning its back on Darfur, with only the United Kingdom giving more this year than last, many donors not giving at all and half the money available in 2006 that there was last year.    “Maybe this world in 2006 is only able to run sprints and not marathons,” Mr. Egeland surmised. “Because this is a marathon. In 2005, we had more diplomatic support than we’ve had in 2006, we had more funding, [and] we had more pressure on the parties than we’ve had this year.”    More pressure needed to be put on both the Government and the rebel movements to observe the ceasefire and reach a peace agreement, he urged. “We feel too much alone as humanitarian workers in Darfur.”    Asked by reporters what humanitarian workers needed, he said: “We need security that we do not have; we need a Government that enables us to work and doesn’t place obstacles before our work; we need guerrillas which are not specializing in hijacking relief trucks and fighting each other and displacing new people, as happened in the last few weeks. And we need funding.”    Speaking to reporters after Mr. Egeland’s comments, the Council President for April, Ambassador Wang Guangya of China, said there were many different factors for the lag in international support for Darfur, but more such support should be coming.    For a real improvement in the situation, he said, the cooperation of all parties was needed. “You need to have the trust and confidence between all players, particularly between the United Nations and the Government of Sudan.”    In northern Uganda, where a 20-year-long rebellion by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has uprooted almost 2 million civilians amid accusations of grave human rights violations by the rebels, Mr. Egeland said the situation was as bad as when he gave his first briefing on the subject to the Council two years ago, but he saw hope for the first time in a long time because the Government is now working with the humanitarian community on a concrete action plan to improve conditions.    But 1.7 million people are still in camps, and as late as yesterday children were being abducted by the LRA and terrorized into becoming child soldiers.    “Northern Uganda has to change in this year 2006,” Mr. Egeland said. “We cannot allow it to continue as it is.”    Noting the positive developments, he said he told the Council that: “To change things on paper is one thing. Another thing is to really change things on the ground and that has not happened yet.”
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