World failing south Sudan peace – UN official

By Opheera McDoom

MALWALKUON, Sudan, March 5, (Reuters) – The world is failing to provide southern Sudan with humanitarian aid, which may encourage a return to fighting, a senior U.N. official said on Saturday.

Two boys share a mango fruit, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005 in a camp for returnees in Rumbek in southern Sudan. (AP).

Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, told Reuters during a trip to the war-ravaged south that the international community was missing a historic opportunity to support a peace deal signed in January to end Africa’s longest civil war.

“It is a historic mistake for donors to sit on the fence at the moment,” Egeland said, adding only 5 percent of the $500 million needed this year to rebuild the south had materialised.

“We have the end of the bloodiest war of our generation but we are failing to support the peace process,” he said. “The fighters will have nothing to do but use their rifles in a criminal way to make a living.”

The war claimed about 2 million lives and forced more than 4 million people from their homes. It broadly pitted the Khartoum-based government against the mainly pagan, Christian rebels, complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.

Egeland, under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the next few weeks before the start of the rainy season in May were crucial, as humanitarian operations in the south would be paralysed when dirt roads became oceans of mud.

“A dollar now is worth two dollars in May or later.”

Egeland said the international community was waiting for a donor conference to be held in Norway in April before giving money, but he emphasized that would be too little too late for southern Sudanese.