U.N. raises alarm over escalating violence in Darfur
Monday Mar 31, 2014 7:45pm GMT
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, March 31 (Reuters) - United Nations and African Union
officials sounded an alarm on Thursday over the worsening violence in
Sudan's western Darfur region, which has led to the displacement of hundreds
of thousands of people this year in the remote, conflict-torn territory.
The expressions of concern came as a U.S. activist group released an
analysis of new satellite images that it said showed signs of devastation in
an area of Darfur in which Khartoum-backed Janjaweed fighters were recently
present.
Joseph Mutaboba, deputy head of the joint U.N. peacekeeping mission in
Darfur, known as UNAMID, and Ali Al-Za'tari, U.N. Resident and Humanitarian
Coordinator in Sudan, issued a joint statement that said it had become
extremely difficult to deliver aid to the needy people of Darfur.
"In the last month, a wave of violence has been underway in Darfur,
affecting tens of thousands of people," they said. "Since the beginning of
2014, more than 215,000 people in Darfur have been displaced from their
homes. Many people in Darfur have no choice but to flee their homes in
fear."
"We call upon the Government of Sudan and all actors and parties involved in
the conflict and the international community to take robust measures to
ensure the protection of civilians and unimpeded access of aid workers in
Darfur," they said.
Earlier this month the United States accused the Sudanese government of
obstructing peacekeepers in Darfur, where it said civilians were being
"terrorized, displaced, and killed" despite the presence of one of the
world's biggest peacekeeping missions. It also urged UNAMID to be more
aggressive in implementing its mandate to protect civilians.
Dozens have been killed in Darfur in recent weeks in fighting between rebels
and security forces. Critics have accused the government of war crimes and
human rights abuses among ethnic minorities in the region.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has stayed in power despite rebellions, U.S.
trade sanctions, an economic crisis, an attempted coup and an indictment
from the International Criminal Court on charges of masterminding genocide
and other war crimes in Darfur.
NEW 'WAR CRIMES'?
Earlier this week senior U.N. humanitarian official John Ging told reporters
that there had been nearly 400,000 newly displaced in Darfur in 2013. The
displacements have continued.
Mutaboba and Za'tari's statement said the United Nations and wider
humanitarian community were increasingly unable to deliver relief to the
people of Darfur.
"Due to the access restrictions and security constraints placed upon
humanitarian agencies, even monitoring the numbers of people who have been
displaced from their homes is increasingly challenging," they said.
The Satellite Sentinel Project, a U.S. activist group, issued a report that
said new DigitalGlobe satellite imagery from March 21 show at least 17 bomb
craters and 311 burned homes across six villages in the mountainous Jebel
Marra area.
"This new incarnation of Janjaweed fighters, now re-named the Rapid Support
Forces but still supported by the Khartoum government, are now attacking
Darfuri civilians and torching homes on a scale not seen since 2003," said
the group's co-founder, John Prendergast.
Prendergast is a former U.S. State Department official who also co-founded
the Enough Project, an anti-genocide group that has been active on the issue
of Sudan and South Sudan.
Janjaweed is the local name for militia forces drawn mainly from the nomadic
Arab tribes of the area and blamed for much of the killing in Darfur in the
early years of the conflict.
The Satellite Sentinel Project statement said a combination of aerial and
ground attacks in East Jebel Marra, a region that has been under a
"government imposed humanitarian aid blockade", had put large numbers of
civilians at risk.
Enough Project analyst Akshaya Kumar said the images "offer independent
evidence of the Sudanese army's war crimes."
Sudan's U.N. ambassador did not respond immediately to a request for
comment.
Law and order have collapsed in much of Darfur, where mainly African tribes
took up arms in 2003 against the Arab-led government in Khartoum, which they
accused of discriminating against them.
UNAMID has been deployed in the region since 2007. During that time almost
170 of its troops and police have been killed.
There are 14,500 troops and 4,500 police on the ground. The conflict in
Darfur has killed as many as 300,000 people and displaced 2 million,
according to the United Nations.
Khartoum puts the Darfur death toll at around 10,000. (Reporting By Louis
Charbonneau; Editing by Toni Reinhold)