01 December 2004
Amb. Hall Urges More Pressure on Sudan to End Crisis in Darfur
U.S. envoy calls for tougher action by international community
By Wendy Lubetkin
Washington File Special Correspondent
Geneva -- A top U.S. humanitarian official has urged the international community to come together to do "whatever it takes" to pressure the government of Sudan and the rebels to end the ongoing tragedy of rapes, killings and destruction in Darfur.
"The people have great fear," said Tony P. Hall, U.S. ambassador to the U. N. food and agriculture agencies, who had just returned from a trip to Darfur. "Because there is no security, they are not going home."
Hall, who was speaking November 30 at a U.S.-sponsored press conference in Geneva via digital video from Rome, is the U.S. envoy to the World Food Program (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Neither the government nor the rebels in Sudan are honoring their commitments to allow access for humanitarian aid, Hall said. "You could see that recently, and even just in the last few days.
"Whatever pressure it takes, whether it be resolutions, more NGOs, more U.N. people, more eyes and ears, certainly more troops coming from the African Union [AU], sanctions, whatever it takes to stop the killing, the violence, the rapes, the tragedy that is going on there, and to take away the fear of these people," he said, "we should put all those things on the table and we should use whatever we have available to us to put pressure on this government and these warring parties."
The pressure, Hall added, would need to "come from a lot of different sources." He expressed frustration at the use of the "threat of veto" at the United Nations by countries that do business in Sudan.
The United Nations estimates that some 1.6 million people have been displaced by the continuing violence. Hall said that the insecurity and lack of access to North Darfur means that as many as 700,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) may now be beyond the reach of humanitarian aid.
"I have been to about 115 countries in the world, and I cannot remember the last time when we had 130 to 150 IDP camps in one country, as we do in North, South and West Darfur," he said.
Hall said the approximately 800 AU soldiers in Darfur lack a real mandate to protect the displaced and are "trying to guard an area about the size of France," an impossible task. The United States hopes that about 3,500 additional AU troops will be on the ground by early January, and it wants them to begin to actively document cases of crimes against humanity. "They need to let these people know that we are not going to forget these crimes that are being committed," he said.
Unless people can return to their villages and farmlands sometime during the next five months, they will not be able to plant for the next season, another harvest will be lost, and the international community will probably need to provide for them for another two years, Hall said.
Hall said the lone bright spot of his November 18-23 trip to Darfur and Libya was traveling to the Libyan desert to observe the passage of a 350-truck aid convoy laden with 6,500 metric tons of American aid destined for Sudanese refugees in Chad. "It was a very historic humanitarian event because for the first time we had American food going through Libya, with the help of Libya and the World Food Program," he said.
While Hall discussed his trip with journalists via video linkup, Jean-Jacques Graisse, senior deputy director of the World Food Program, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, were present at the press conference. (Earlier the same day in Geneva, United Nations aid officials launched an urgent appeal for $1.5 billion in aid for war-torn Sudan during the coming year.)
WFP's Graisse noted that the opening of the Libyan corridor was essential because during the rainy season it is the only land route to the refugee camps in Chad. Airlifts and airdrops would be up to 10 times as expensive, and would require a presence on the ground for distribution and organization that is not in place.
"The needs for 2005 are enormous until the refugees go back home and the IDPs return to their place of origin," said Graisse. The United Nations has estimated that some 2.5 million people will be in need of food assistance in Darfur next year.
Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas-Greenfield said the United States is also concerned that if the violence continues in Darfur, more people will flee cross the border into Chad. The logistics of supporting the 200,000 Sudanese refugees already there are extremely difficult, she said. "Finding adequate water to sustain life is not an easy thing in Chad and remains a problem that we are working on almost 24 hours a day," she said.
"It is a two- to three-day drive from N'Djamena to Abeche and some of the food is coming in from Cameroon, so just getting things moved from point A to point B is very worrisome for all of us. The fact that this food came in through Libya was a very important success story for us in Chad," Thomas-Greenfield said.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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