Slow aid delays southern refugees’ return – Sudan
July 7, 2006 (BEIRUT) — The slow disbursement of promised international aid is delaying the repatriation of refugees to Sudan’s south more than a year after the end of Africa’s longest civil war, Sudan Foreign Minister Lam Akol said on Friday.
Akol, speaking at a news conference in Beirut, said donors that last year pledged $4.5 billion to help the country recover from the war between the Khartoum government and southern rebels “have come up only with about 30 percent of what they promised.”
“This is delaying the implementation of things that cannot be postponed, like the repatriation of the refugees and the displaced,” he said.
After two decades of civil war which claimed two million lives and forced more than four million to flee their homes, the government in Khartoum signed a peace deal last year with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA.)
“We need money to provide the refugees and displaced with water, with medical and educational services. With the number of refugees and displaced people we have you can estimate we need a lot of money.”
Big pledges at a subsequent aid conference in Oslo came from the European Commission which promised about $765 million, Britain $545 million, Norway $250 million and the Netherlands $220 million.
The World Bank said in March that over $1.1 billion of aid money were spent on urgent humanitarian needs mostly in the south. Aid needed at southern Sudan alone stands at $2.5 billion, the World Bank says.
On the situation in Darfur, Akol said Khartoum believed a new rebel alliance that attacked a Sudanese town on Monday did not pose a serious threat to the peace agreement between the government and one of three rebel negotiating factions.
“Any armed group needs support on the ground in order to survive. The most important thing is popular support,” he said.
“This group does not enjoy this. It cannot achieve more than a media splash and I don’t believe it can, on the long run, pose a threat to the Darfur peace deal.”
The National Redemption Front (NRF) that attacked Hamrat al-Sheikh in North Kordofan, which neighbours Darfur, is an alliance of Darfur rebels and political parties who reject the May 5 peace deal.
(Reuters)