Sudan must allow Darfur peacekeepers to operate – Egeland
August 27, 2007 (SINGAPORE) — The former United Nations official who oversaw a massive relief operation in Sudan’s Darfur region called Tuesday for Khartoum to allow international peacekeepers to operate effectively there.
Jan Egeland was commenting as the UN-African Union peacekeeping force — the world’s biggest ever at 26,000 troops — prepares to begin deployment to Darfur in October.
“There are two things that will make it really effective. One is that we get enough high quality forces from the member states and the second is that the government of Sudan lets it in, and lets it operate,” Egeland told AFP.
Egeland — who was speaking after addressing the top governing body of the Christian aid organisation World Vision — said he was optimistic about the force, which will not be deployed in full before the middle of next year.
“I think that it will mean a big difference in terms of protecting, for the first time, the civilian population,” he said.
The UN’s Security Council on July 31 approved deployment of the joint UN-African Union force to Darfur after the Khartoum government finally relented on months of opposition to the involvement of UN troops and police.
The UN estimates that at least 200,000 people have died and more than two million have fled their homes since the conflict erupted in February 2003, when rebel groups complaining of political and economic marginalisation by the Khartoum government took up arms.
Egeland said he negotiated in 2003 the first agreement on access for humanitarian organisations to Darfur.
With about 80 UN and other international organisations, including World Vision, providing relief to Darfur, very few if any people there now die from lack of food, shelter or medical assistance, he said.
“But people are still massacred and villages are still being burnt. We’re not protecting them, and that’s what we have to change,” he said.
Egeland is now director general of the government-linked Norwegian Foreign Policy Institute after ending his term as head of UN humanitarian affairs last year.
Khartoum has expelled two Western diplomats and an aid worker since last week, prompting Washington to say it hoped the government was not trying to sidetrack international efforts to end the violence in Darfur.
In March, Egeland was named special adviser on conflict prevention to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Egeland is to assist Ban on matters relating to the prevention and resolution of conflicts and will help bolster UN capacity for peacemaking and good offices, a UN spokesperson said at the time.
(AFP)