mortality rates in Darfur are comparable to Rawanda
GENEVA, Sep 13, 2004 (IPS) — The high mortality rates documented by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the past few weeks in camps of internally displaced people in the region of Darfur in western Sudan are comparable to those seen in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994, said an expert from the United Nations agency.
WHO does not describe what is occurring in Darfur as genocide, but it did not use that term to classify the mass killings of around 800,000 people in Rwanda either, said David Nabarro, WHO director general representative for Health Action Crisis.
In some of the camps, the mortality rates registered by the teams of WHO and Sudanese Health Ministry staff were as high as 3.8 deaths per 10,000 people a day — several times the highest mortality rate in poor African communities not in crisis, which is 0.6 deaths per 10,000.
Nabarro said the threshold for an emergency situation is one death a day per 10,000 people.
“These mortality figures are a source of considerable concern for us and frankly a source of sadness,” the U.N. official told reporters in Geneva Monday.
He said that after six months of humanitarian efforts in Darfur, “we would expect…to be seeing death rates of below one per 10,000 per day.”
The results of the investigation carried out between Jun. 15 and Aug. 15 in three areas of Darfur indicate that mortality rates are higher than those registered during the crises in East Timor and the Balkans, and in Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991, said Nabarro.
He said the conditions in Darfur were more difficult than the insurgency-racked Iraq, which is occupied by U.S.-led coalition forces that invaded the country in March 2003.
In North Darfur, where there are around 380,000 displaced people, the mortality rate stood at 1.5 per 10,000 people, and at 2.5 per 10,000 among children under five.
In western Darfur, the mortality rate was 2.9 per 10,000, and in the only camp that the teams of experts were able to visit in the southern part of the region, Kalma Camp, the rate climbed to 3.8 deaths per 10,000.
Nabarro explained that the teams of WHO and Sudanese Health Ministry officials were unable to visit other camps in the south due to the violence and threats.
“We were unable to complete the survey as planned,” said the official. “In some areas the settlements were inaccessible because there was fighting going on and because our survey team…was held up at gun point.”
“The experience was sufficiently unsettling that we decided to suspend data collection for a period.”
But Nabarro added that when the experts realised how high the death rates were, “we decided we have to report it, even if it is incomplete.”
In all three regions of Darfur, the main cause of death was diarrhoea, while “injuries and violence” were responsible for perhaps 20 percent of the deaths, and fever and pneumonia were to blame for another large proportion, according to the study.
One-fourth of those interviewed in the camps said their main source of water was “unprotected wells”, one-third said they had no access to latrines, 45 percent had no soap, and one-third had not received food rations in the past month.
However, Nabarro refused to define the mortality statistics as forming part of a broader context of “genocide”, a term that political leaders in some countries have recently begun to use to describe what is occurring in Sudan.
“I cannot comment on that because in no way can our report be used to infer genocide or not,” said the WHO official. “We cannot say that this is due to any kind of systematic violence.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Thursday that he had reached the conclusion that what was occurring in Darfur amounted to genocide against the majority black population.
He said the government of Sudan and ethnic Arab militias known as Janjaweed – armed men on horseback – “bear responsibility” for the mass killings in Darfur.
The conflict, which erupted in 2003, involves the Janjaweed, which have been accused of massacres, gang rapes, abductions, torching villages and crops and slaughtering cattle belonging to members of black ethnic groups in Darfur: the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa.
The Sudanese government has not only been accused of creating the militias but also of turning a blind eye to their continued killings. An estimated 50,000 black Africans have been slain and over 1.5 million displaced in Darfur.
The black ethnic groups formed the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) to counter the Janjaweed.
The U.N. describes the humanitarian crisis as the worst in the world.
The European Union, which also refrains from using the term genocide, said the government in Khartoum has failed to take the necessary steps to disarm the Janjaweed militias, as demanded by a Jul. 30 U.N. Security Council resolution.
Foreign Minister Bernard Bot of the Netherlands, which currently holds the EU rotating presidency, said the 25-nation bloc may apply sanctions against Sudan if progress is not seen in the humanitarian situation in Darfur.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail accused the U.S. government of manipulating information on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.
The U.S. government is planning on using Sudan, as it did with Iraq, as a “scapegoat…for its own political agenda” ahead of the November presidential elections, said Ismail during a visit to South Korea.
The problem in Darfur is not a question of genocide, but a conflict between nomadic and agricultural tribes, the minister argued.
Nabarro said U.N. agencies must work hard to improve supplies of clean water and bring hygiene and health installations to all of the camps of displaced persons in Darfur. He also insisted that security must be guaranteed and the administration of the camps improved.