Sudan told to stop hindering aid groups
March 23, 2007 (JUBA) — The new U.N. humanitarian chief said Friday he had told senior Sudanese government officials they must stop hindering the work of aid groups in the country.
Former British diplomat John Holmes, who took over March 1 as U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, inaugurated his term this week with a visit to Sudan at the start of an eight-day trip that also includes stops in Chad and the Central African Republic.
Holmes told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that he had met with senior Sudanese officials a day earlier in Khartoum and stressed the need for the government not to interfere with humanitarian work.
Relations between aid workers and the government have known “good periods and less good periods” over the past three years, Holmes said as he returned from southern Sudan. “This is a less good period.”
Holmes replaced Jan Egeland, who was largely credited for raising world awareness of the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region where more than 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced in four years of fighting between government forces and local rebels.
Darfur has become “the biggest humanitarian operation in the world, of enormous significance,” both for Sudan and for regional stability, Holmes said.
The U.N. says that with more than $650 million in aid planned this year and more than 14,000 humanitarian workers in the region, malnutrition and other humanitarian indicators have been brought below emergency levels in Darfur.
“It is a great success story that has saved a lot of lives,” Holmes said. “But it remains fragile.”
Besides spiraling violence — 11 humanitarian vehicles were hijacked and two aid compounds raided in February alone — aid groups in Darfur have faced obstruction from Sudan’s government.
Holmes listed easing government bureaucracy for aid workers and pushing for a political solution in Darfur as the main means of improving the situation there.
“The humanitarian effort is important, but you can’t sustain it forever,” he said.
He also welcomed a move by the president of semiautonomous southern Sudan to bring the various rebels groups from Darfur together for new peace talks with the central government.
President Salva Kiir heads the government in Southern Sudan, hundreds of miles away from Darfur. But two decades of civil war against their common enemy — Khartoum — and the signature of a successful peace agreement between north and south in 2005, have given former southern rebels significant clout with many Darfur leaders.
Both Darfurians and southerners are ethnic Africans who took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government they accused of discrimination.
“There is a huge opportunity to rebuild the south,” said Holmes, stating he would make sure that international donors do not focus solely on Darfur.
(AP)