SUDAN: Situation in Darfur has deteriorated further in the last few years, says Egeland

United Nations Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland, said on Thursday (November 18) that the humanitarian situation in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur had deteriorated considerably over the past three years. He added that abuses against women are continuing unabated and warned that all those responsible for abuses in the region would one day be prosecuted. Egeland made the comments at a news conference in Khartoum following a two-day visit to al-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state. "Never would I have thought that on my fourth and final visit, the number of people in need of assistance would have gone from one to four million, and never would I have thought that the fear, the angst among the civilian population of Darfur, would remain the same after three long years," the UN humanitarian chief said, as he wound up a visit to the country. Egeland arrived in Darfur to find security so bad he could not visit the camps outside al-Geneina housing tens of thousands of terrorised Darfuris. Instead, they came to him with pleas for help, meeting the UN relief chief at the offices of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Egeland said the Darfuris he met pleaded with him to bring UN troops to protect them, saying the African Union monitoring force had done nothing to help. "I met in al-Geneina, yesterday, women who were pleading for security; who said 'we are abused, we are raped, we are attacked and nobody seems to want to protect us,'" Egeland told reporters. But Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has refused UN forces, describing them as a Western invasion aimed at recolonising Sudan. Critics say he fears the troops would be used to arrest officials likely to be indicted by the International Criminal Court. Egeland said nobody would escape punishment for crimes committed against innocent civilians. "Those who continue to attack defenseless civilians, and it happened this night in Jebel Marra, those people will one day be brought to justice," he promised. The government signed a peace deal in May with only one of three rebel negotiating factions. Most of the 2.5 million who fled their homes to miserable Darfur camps reject the deal as insufficient. Experts estimate 200,000 have died in 3-1/2 years of conflict in Darfur. Khartoum armed militias to quell the mostly non-Arab tribes who took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of marginalising the remote west. The government-backed militia, known locally as Janjaweed, is accused of a campaign of rape, murder and pillage called genocide by the United States. Khartoum denies genocide. The International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes in the region.

ITN Source | November 19, 2006

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