ERC VISITS ABYEI, SUDAN’S TRANSTIONAL AREA

Date: 06 Nov 2010 (New York / Juba, Sudan, 6 November 2010): On the third day of her visit to Sudan, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC) Valerie Amos travelled to Western Equatoria in southern Sudan and to the transitional area of Abyei. In Ezo County, on the border with neighbouring Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ms. Amos met local authorities as well as some of the 13,000 people displaced by repeated attacks from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the past three years. Discussions focused on the humanitarian impact of the violence, which has severely disrupted agricultural production in this otherwise fertile region. The ERC attended a general food distribution at a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs), carried out by aid organizations, and also visited a mobile health clinic. Ms. Amos reiterated her call for urgent additional measures from the State Government, in collaboration with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), to provide protection for populations living in LRA affected areas. “The protection of civilians must be at the heart of the planning process of the recently announced joint government initiative for an anti-LRA force. All components of the force, in particular armed community defense groups, should be subject to close Government oversight, in collaboration with expert protection partners,” she said. In the contested border area of Abyei, which bridges the North and the South of Sudan, Ms. Amos visited the town of Agok, to which 50,000 people fled the fighting between the SPLA and Sudan Armed Forces in May 2008 in Abyei town. Tensions between the Misseriya and the Dinka Ngok tribes remain high and uncertainty over the referenda in the area could lead to further violence. In Agok, she visited a primary and secondary health care center run by Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), where more than 2,000 children under five have been treated for severe malnutrition since the beginning of the year. A food security assessment conducted in October 2009 revealed that 30 per cent of the Dinka Ngok population and 23 per cent of the Misseriya population are severely food insecure. 52,000 people receive food assistance in the greater Abyei area. The ERC also met with the Chief Administrator of Abyei. About the ongoing referenda-related contingency planning being undertaken by the humanitarian community, Ms. Amos insisted that a “negotiated access framework be agreed between the North and the South in the transitional areas in order to ensure that humanitarian partners are able to deliver assistance to vulnerable populations in areas where conflict could erupt”. She added that “people in need of humanitarian assistance must be assisted irrespective of which side of the border they find themselves.” Tomorrow, the ERC will continue to El- Fasher and Nyala in Darfur, where renewed violence and limited access have hindered the access humanitarian workers have to those in need of assistance. Full_Report (pdf* format – 270.7 Kbytes) full_report.pdf

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