UN official requests Darfur intervention without govt consent

Oct 25, 2006 (GENEVA) — The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Switzerland’s Jean Ziegler, has demanded the organisation intervene in western Sudan’s Darfur without Khartoum approval.

|right>Ziegler, presenting his annual report in New York, said that the war-torn region represented the worst current humanitarian crisis.

The Geneva sociologist added that the UN had the right to intervene to help local populations without the authorisation of the Sudanese government. Ziegler, who has yet to travel to Darfur, said this was only way of setting up proper and secure humanitarian corridors.

Ziegler said Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bechir was doing the same to hinder aid arriving in Darfur. Eight UN humanitarian workers were even killed in the region this summer.

Ziegler, whose mandate will be reviewed by the UN’s Human Rights Council next June, also produced reports this year on the food situation in India and Guatemala. He hopes to get to Sudan in 2007 after his visits were refused twice.

(Info Suisse)