UNHCR chief visits displaced Sudanese in Darfur

ZALINGEI, Sudan, April 19 (Reuters) – The acting U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees visited displaced Sudanese in an isolated and dangerous part of the Darfur region on Tuesday and said the agency was doing what it could to protect them.

UNHCR’s Acting High Commissioner, Wendy Chamberlin. (UNHCR).

UNHCR gives women alternative fuels so that they need not leave their camps to collect firewood and risk attack or rape by militiamen, Wendy Chamberlin told reporters in the town of Zalingei in the centre of the region.

“There are many ways to die in Darfur and there are also many ways to protect people from this,” she said.

It has also set up soap and pasta production units in the camps so that women can make some money without having to sell firewood on the local markets, she added.

Zalingei contains about 62,000 displaced people from the surrounding area, four times as many people as used to live there. They are among some 2 million who have fled their homes in Darfur because of a conflict now in its third year.

It lies in a region where tensions between Arab nomads and non-Arab farmers run high and where the danger of abduction and robbery on the roads has hindered access for humanitarian workers.

Chamberlin said UNHCR was working in local villages to publicise local security problems and alert African Union forces who are monitoring a shaky ceasefire between the government and rebel groups operating in the region.

“We are moving white UN vehicles up and down thousands of kilometres (miles) of fine red dust tracks to head into communities and highlight security issues,” she said.

Zalingei lies 120 km (75 miles) southeast of the West Darfur state capital Geneina, in the foothills of Marra mountain.