Some African govts hinder aid – UN envoy
April 8, 2006 (NAIROBI) — Spurned on recent trips to Africa, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official has said some African leaders are hindering the world body’s work at the expense of their own citizens.
Jan Egeland, the U.N. under secretary for humanitarian affairs, this week was denied permission to visit Sudan’s troubled Darfur region for a second time.
And his 2005 trip to see the impact of a slum destruction programme in Zimbabwe infuriated President Robert Mugabe.
“In most countries it’s going well, but in some we do not get neither the access, the security or the support that we need in situations where it’s their citizens’ lives that are at stake,” Egeland said when asked why some African leaders were not welcoming the United Nations into their countries.
Political considerations often get in the way, he said.
“I think it’s because there is this short-term vision where they think ‘I can’t politically survive in my position today’,” he told Reuters in an interview.
“And the inability for some leaders to stand up to truth of what’s really happening in their country.”
Egeland, in charge of coordinating the U.N.’s humanitarian and emergency relief work, has put a major focus on Africa since taking office in 2003.
Darfur has been on the top of Egeland’s agenda, and Sudan has twice denied him access. This time, Khartoum said it had only asked him to delay his trip.
Tens of thousands have been killed and millions driven from their homes during more than three years of conflict, which the United States has called genocide.
TRIP TO ZIMBABWE
After Egeland’s Zimbabwe visit, Mugabe accused him of being a “hypocrite and a liar.”
Egeland was the most senior U.N. official to visit Zimbabwe since the government embarked on a slum-demolishing campaign last year. The United Nations estimated it had destroyed the homes or livelihoods of more than 3 million people.
Egeland said the United Nation’s experience in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a peacekeeping force has made it much easier to deliver aid, was a model for Darfur.
“It had a massive positive affect on humanitarian access and ability for us to facilitate the return of displaced,” he said.
Egeland said a U.N. force in Darfur would have to be twice the size of the 7,000-strong African Union team there now and have the mobility to patrol an area the size of France.
“This is not a conventional war here. We have cowardly men on horseback or camels or pickups who specialise in killing women and children,” Egeland said.
Sudan has refused to bow to international pressure to accept a U.N. takeover of the AU force in Darfur, but said it might consider that after a peace deal is reached with Darfur rebels.
(Reuters)