Child soldiers conference castigates Sudan over Darfur
Feb 7, 2007 (PARIS) — Sudan’s attempt to play down the security and the humanitarian situations in the war-torn Darfur region has sparked a strong reaction from the participants at the conference on child soldiers in Paris.
“Nobody here understands why your government is obstinately refusing the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur,” said the vice-Premier and Luxembourg Foreign Affairs Minister, Jean Asselborn, the News Agency of Nigeria reported.
Speaking at a news conference, the UN secretary-general special representative for children and armed conflicts, Radhika Coomaraswamy, said she had noticed the situation was getting worse during her recent visit to the war-wracked region. Child — 2 “I am very concerned with the humanitarian situation there. Children are particularly facing serious difficulties that would call for the intervention of the international community,” she noted.
The Chadian government delegation seized the opportunity at the conference to reiterate its “subversion” allegations against Khartoum. “Chad is a victim of the Darfur crisis, which the government of President (Omar) El Bashir is trying to export to the whole sub-region.
We have welcomed 300,000 Sudanese refugees, 110,000 internally displaced people due to lack of will by the Sudan government to solve the Darfur crisis,” said Chad Foreign Affairs Minister, Ahmed Allami.
He described as “wise” the African Union’s decision not to give its presidency to the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir “while he is accused in the Darfur crisis”. “We have the impression that the Sudanese government is not measuring up to the seriousness of the situation. It just accepts suggestions reluctantly but has put no effort in finding a solution to the crisis, Allami added.
The conference, attended by representatives of 58 government delegations, NGOs and UN agencies signed a nonbinding accord not to use children under 18 in wars.
The accord came at the close of a two-day conference in Paris organized by Unicef and the French Foreign Ministry. Signers included 10 of 12 countries identified by the United Nations as places where child soldiers are used. They were Burundi, Chad, Colombia, Congo, Ivory Coast, Nepal, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda.
(ST)