INTERVIEW-U.N. says Sudan agrees to let aid into Darfur
By Thomas Atkins
GENEVA, June 4 (Reuters) – The United Nations is to send extra human rights monitors to the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur to hold the government to a new pledge to open access to foreign aid, the U.N.’s top relief official said on Friday.
The government renewed its aid pledge at talks on Thursday in Geneva attended by rebel groups and representatives of the European Union, the United States and the African Union, said Jan Egeland, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“We have very, very firm promises that all parties will do their utmost not to hinder our assistance, but to help us help their own people,” Egeland told Reuters in an interview.
“We will now hold them to their pledge by deploying an increasing number of monitors in Darfur,” he said.
The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights will send six new monitors to Darfur to add to the small number already there. The African Union is also deploying monitors, as will OCHA itself, Egeland said.
Egeland spoke one day after the U.N. mobilised donor countries to pledge $126 million for Darfur, in western Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes and farms to avoid government-backed militias, accused by the U.N. of ethnic cleansing.
OCHA is spearheading attempts to head off mass starvation in Darfur, a remote region roughly the size of France, where many villages have been razed by Arab militias called Janjaweed, creating what the U.N. calls the world’s worse humanitarian crisis.
The head of U.S. government agency USAID warned on Thursday that 320,000 people in an area holding nearly seven million might already be condemned to die from hunger and disease, regardless of U.N. help.
TURNING POINT?
Violence intensified over a year ago when rebels allied to those active in the unsettled south accused the Sudanese government of neglecting the impoverished area and arming Arab militias to loot and burn black African villages.
Darfur captured the world’s attention in April when U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan warned that a Rwanda-style genocide was in the making and said international military force could be needed to stop it.
But the government still had to halt the actions of the militias, Egeland said.
“They are not rebels at all. The Janjaweed is a militia that the government could, can, and must disarm and demobilise. The civilian population is still being harassed, still being attacked and they must be protected,” he said.
On Friday, the U.N. said hundreds of refugees were continuing to arrive in towns along the Sudan-Chad border and the flow showed no sign of slowing.
With the donor and diplomatic community now mobilised, Egeland said that there was still a chance to prevent the crisis from worsening.
But the U.N. still needed $111 million to meet its fund-raising goals for 2004.
“This is no wish-list. This is exactly what it would take to avoid massive death and starvation. If we don’t get it all, so many people will perish. It is as dramatic as that,” he said.