UNICEF chief ends tour of troubled Darfur

CAIRO, June 14 (AFP) — United Nations Children’s Fund chief Carol Bellamy ended a two-day visit to the war-ravaged Darfur region of west Sudan with a tour of camps for displaced persons in Geneina in western Darfur.

Bellamy visited a number of projects supported by UNICEF in the region such as schools and water and sanitation projects and listened to locals describe their problems, Sandrine Martin, a UNICEF spokesperson in Khartoum told AFP by telephone.

The UNICEF executive director was scheduled to return to Khartoum Monday night and spend much of Tuesday conferring with senior government officials about her experience in the troubled Darfur region.

Bellamy began her visit in the region in on Sunday in Nyala, the capital of south Darfur state.

She went on to Kass, a camp hosting thousands of people displaced from nearby villages and towns by the bitter conflict raging between government forces and their Janjaweed militia allies, and Darfur rebels.

The purpose of Bellamy’s visit to Darfur was to enable her to “see first-hand the life-threatening situation facing hundreds of thousands of children caught in one of the world’s most rapidly developing humanitarian crises”, UNICEF said.

The agency said it was “deeply concerned about the growing vulnerability of the vast displaced population in Darfur, now estimated at some one million people, half of them children.”

Nearly all face food shortages, outbreaks of disease, exploitation, and the rainy season, which has just started.

Darfur is in the throes of what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, prompted by a rebellion with ethnic overtones sparked in February 2003 that led to a fierce retaliation by government forces and allied Arab Janjaweed militia.