Sudan, U.N. sign deal ensuring voluntarily return of Darfur displaced

By MOHAMED OSMAN, Associated Press Writer

KHARTOUM, Aug 21, 2004 (AP) — The Sudanese government signed an agreement with the U.N.’s migration agency Saturday ensuring that more than 1 million people displaced by the 18-month Darfur conflict will have the right to voluntarily return home, but only once they feel the situation is secure enough to do so.

Signed in Khartoum, the agreement aims to ensure that no people displaced by the conflict, which has killed an estimated 30,000 people and destroyed scores of villages, will be forced by Sudanese security forces to return home before security has been restored or they are ready to go back.

The agreement is one of several measures Sudanese authorities have committed to undertaking under the Darfur Plan of Action, a framework drawn up to demonstrate to the U.N. Security Council that Khartoum is moving to end the conflict, which the United Nations says has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

“We have put together something that can work,” said Brunson McKinley, director general of the U.N.’s Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, adding, however, that the return of the displaced people “is not going to be (an) easy or quick” process.

McKinley told reporters he had visited several displaced people camps in Darfur, where most people told him that they wanted to return home providing that security was ensured.

McKinley, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail and an envoy for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan signed the agreement, which calls for forming a group to manage and coordinate the voluntary return of displaced people to their Darfur homes.

“Now we have a mechanism that would dispel any doubts as to whether the return of the IDPs (internally displaced people) is voluntary or not,” Ismail stressed during the signing ceremony.

There have been allegations of Sudanese security forces trying to force displaced people living in camps dotted throughout Darfur’s three states to return home, a U.N. official said, adding, however, that there have been no confirmed cases of this happening.

Ismail made a call for international support, particularly from the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, to help enable the return home of those displaced by the conflict.

Fighting in Darfur has been raging since African rebels rose up against the government in February 2003 over what they regarded as unjust treatment by Sudanese authorities. The region’s nomadic Arab tribes have long been at odds with their African farming neighbors over dwindling resources, particularly water and usable land.

Since then, armed bands of herders, most of them pro-government Arabs, known as the Janjaweed, have been torching village after village in the sprawling, arid region. The United States and aid agencies accuse the government of backing the Janjaweed, claims Khartoum denies.

But U.N. spokesperson Radhia Achouri said Friday that Sudanese authorities have acknowledged controlling some of the Janjaweed through promising to provide a list of militiamen suspected of involvement in the Darfur conflict.

The United Nations Security Council has given the Sudanese government until Aug. 30 to disarm Arab militias blamed for the violence or face diplomatic and economic sanctions.

Peace talks sponsored by the African Union are scheduled to be held in Nigeria on Monday between the two African rebel groups and the Sudanese government.

The United Nations says the conflict has driven about 1.4 million people from their homes, many of whom are now in displaced people camps, while another 180,000 have fled into neighboring Chad.

Under Saturday’s agreement, Sudanese authorities agreed to accept the International Organization for Migration’s determination on whether people are ready to return home voluntarily and to ensure the security of the U.N. agency’s staff and displaced people in Darfur.

Paul Norton, the IOM’s chief in Sudan, said it was crucial that displaced people in Darfur are not forced to return home before the security has been established and conditions, including suitable living arrangements, have been provided in their former homes.

“We are talking about people who have been traumatized in one way or another, but ultimately the goal is to help these people go home and get on with their lives,” Norton told The Associated Press in Egypt during a telephone interview.