UN aid workers fear worsening access to Darfur civilians
Oct 31, 2006 (GENEVA) — U.N. aid workers fear their precarious access to the suffering people in Darfur could get even worse, officials said Tuesday, despite a top Sudanese official saying most parts of the region were secure.
“Our biggest concern right now is that our hard-won gains could be easily lost if the situation continues,” said Michael Bociurkiw of the U.N. Children’s Fund.
The situation is “extremely difficult” for aid workers and “insecurity often prevents us from being able to access people,” said Simon Pluess, a spokesman for the World Food Program. He said aid workers had been unable to get access to some 350,000 people in northern Darfur during September.
But Sudanese Culture Minister Mohammed Youssef Abdullah told a separate news conference the humanitarian situation wasn’t that bad.
He said 14 of Darfur’s 23 provinces were peaceful, with the south and west calmer than the north.
“We believe the security in Darfur is OK,” he said.
Pluess told reporters that aid workers and the local population were constantly exposed to security threats, banditry and other criminal acts.
“The biggest victims are the civilians, the displaced, in Darfur who suffer almost on a daily basis from violations and attacks,” Pluess added.
Abdullah, who was in Geneva to attend a cultural week organized by the Sudanese community, visited the U.N.’s European headquarters to talk to reporters. He conceded there was a problem if people were driven from their homes, but he said the main indicators of well-being – mortality and malnutrition rates, as well as the amount of clean water provided to the population – show the situation was normal.
“Mortality rates are below the threshold of an emergency situation,” he said. The rate of access to clean water was “up to 65% in certain areas, which is the normal level of the capital of Sudan,” he added. “And we believe this is a big success for all of us in the humanitarian process.”
These indicators don’t take into account sexual violence against women and children, the minister said when asked about widespread reported rapes of civilians.
Jennifer Pagonis, of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said violence and insecurity were severely hampering the aid workers’ job.
“We have reduced access,” she said. “Sometimes we just simply can’t get out to (displacement) camps because of security constraints.”
She added the agency’s assessment of the humanitarian situation in Darfur wouldn’t “tally with that of the Sudanese minister.”
“It’s very, very difficult for us,” Pagonis said.
Violence has risen dramatically in recent weeks in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have fled their homes in more than three years of fighting. The latest upsurge in fighting has caused increasing numbers of aid workers to withdraw, leaving many refugees without food or medicine.
The U.N. has authorized 20,000 troops to replace an under-equipped force of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur. But the Sudanese government has rejected the U.N. force, and last week expelled the U.N.’s Sudan envoy, Jan Pronk.
(AP)