Sudan hinders aid groups going to Darfur : U.N.
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, June 14 (Reuters) – Sudan is blocking aid groups from getting food and medicine to hundreds of thousands of people in its western Darfur region, despite promises to the contrary, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.
Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator, said most U.N. relief groups had access, but the world body also relied on partnerships with private or non-governmental organizations.
“Some ministers are helping us, but some of their subordinates are sabotaging us,” he told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council on civilians in war zones.
Groups, such as Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders), are experiencing undue delays in getting visas, bringing in equipment, medicine and food.
For example, Egeland said, radios needed for emergency communications were stripped from vehicles because Sudanese authorities believed they were a security liability.
“If they have no radio, they cannot go into Darfur,” he said. “They see this as a security risk for the government. We see it as a security necessity for us.”
The United Nations estimates fighting in Darfur has affected more than two million people. More than half have been driven from their homes, with 130,000 fleeing into neighboring Chad to escape Arab militia that have killed, tortured and raped African villagers.
“People are dying because we were denied access for so long, and people will be dying because we are not able to get through,” Egeland said. Some U.N. officials have accused the Sudanese troops as indistinguishable from militia, a charge Khartoum has denied.
Egeland said a cease-fire in Darfur was sporadic. “We are still seeing grown men attacking defenseless woman and children with their automatic rifles,” he said.
Doctors without Borders said late in May it had 50 pending requests for visas and had medical supplies impounded when they arrived by sea and not by emergency air transport.
“Even though insecurity is a factor limiting our access, bureaucratic obstacles imposed by the government of Sudan are also a critical factor in limiting the access we have,” it said in a statement to the Security Council.
Egeland said Sudan was not alone in preventing access to conflict zones, which had left 10 million people in 20 nations without basic necessities. They include areas of the Central Africa Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, the northern Caucuses and northern Uganda.
And he said Somalia had almost entire disappeared from the world’s radar screen.