Displaced Sudanese women do not feel safe enough to return home
KHARTOUM, Sudan, June 13, 2004 (AP) — Thousands of Sudanese women who have taken refuge at a displaced persons camp in southern Darfur told the visiting head of the United Nations Children’s Fund that they are afraid to return home.
UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy promised to exert every possible effort to help the displaced families, many of whom have lost husbands, fathers and sons in the region’s fighting, said James Elder, the UNICEF communications officer for Darfur.
“Women and children who gave Bellamy a rapturous welcome told her they would not go home because they don’t feel safe,” Elder told The Associated Press by telephone from the camp in Kass, 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state.
Although UNICEF has provided drinking water and vaccinations and other groups have also given humanitarian assistance to the displaced camps, Bellamy told the audience that the global community needed to offer more help.
“We simply want more and more assistance,” Elder quoted her as saying.
Also Sunday, Asma Jahangir, the U.N. special human rights expert on executions, gave a press briefing on her visit to Darfur and other areas of Sudan and said she was “disturbed and alarmed by the gravity of the human rights abuses” in the country.
“I received numerous accounts of extrajudicial and summary executions carried out by government-backed militias and by the security forces themselves,” she said of Darfur. She said she also heard of mass graves, but was not able to verify the reports.
Jahangir, who met with senior military, judiciary and human rights officials in her June 1-13 visit, said she was “deeply concerned” about the humanitarian situation in Darfur.
“The government must ensure that immediate and complete access is provided to humanitarian actors as well as human rights monitors, so that the international community is given every opportunity in cooperation with the government to protect the life of vulnerable populations in Darfur,” she said.
The United Nations has described the 15-month conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and on Friday, the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution calling for an immediate halt to fighting in Darfur.
Thousands have been killed in fighting between Arab militias and the black African population in the western Darfur region since February 2003. Thousands more have been driven from their homes and the United Nations says 2 million people are in acute need of food and medical help.
The conflict has drawn charges of ethnic cleansing of mainly African tribes by government-backed Arab militias, which the government has denied.
Sudan recently relaxed restrictions on access of humanitarian organizations to Darfur as part of efforts to streamline humanitarian aid and a response to complaints of delays and lack of full cooperation from the government.