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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
SUDAN: Darfur insecurity much worse than last year
NAIROBI, 10 Aug 2006 (IRIN) - Insecurity has worsened significantly across the Darfur region in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, according to a senior United Nations official.
"The number of armed clashes during that period was twice as high as the number last year," Jan Pronk, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to Sudan, told reporters in Khartoum on Wednesday.
Attacks against the UN decreased by 10 percent, mainly because UN personnel were moving less outside towns due to insecurity, Pronk said. The number of attacks on NGOs, however, was 75 percent higher and attacks against peacekeepers of the African Union (AU) went up by 900 percent.
"The result is an increase in displaced people, with 40,000 more than last year," Pronk stressed.
The special envoy warned that the situation had deteriorated particularly in the three months since the signing of the 5 May Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) between the Sudanese government and the largest of the three main rebel factions, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), under the command of Minni Minnawi.
Since the signing of the DPA, violence has been widespread across Darfur due to the fragmentation of various rebel groups and escalating fighting between the signatories and the non-signatories of the DPA. Banditry and general lawlessness are rife and militias, rebel groups and government forces have clashed regularly.
The peace deal also has little popular support among civilians in Darfur, many of whom continue to live in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refuse to return to their villages for fear of renewed attacks. Tension in many of the camps for the region’s two million IDPs has steadily risen.
Despite the escalating violence, Pronk observed that the AU had investigated very few ceasefire violations since the beginning of May. "These investigations are hardly taking place because people - representatives of the parties [the Sudanese government and Minnawi’s SLM/A] - are not there," he said. "So you see a complete stalemate and that is one of my major worries."
According to a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the human rights office of the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), published on Wednesday, not a single investigation into cease-fire violations had taken place since mid-June.
The report found that although fighting between Sudan’s armed forces and Minnawi’s SLM/A faction lessened after the signing of the DPA, attacks on civilians by militias and rebel factions continued unabated, mainly in South and North Darfur.
Furthermore, the signing of the DPA had not resulted in a decline in sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). "North Darfur has witnessed an increase in the number of SGBV cases due to targeted violence against women perceived to be supporting opposing factions of the rebel movement," the report observed. The increase was also a result of the suspension of AU firewood patrols outside IDP camps and the withdrawal of the pan-African forces from various locations, following IDP demonstrations and attacks.
"Without additional government support, the DPA is doomed to failure, with the population of Darfur continuing to suffer grave violations of human rights as violence among competing armed groups in Darfur persists," the report warned.
The report called on the international community to urgently provide increased support to the African Union to enable it to fulfil its expanded role in monitoring and verifying compliance with disarmament provisions, monitoring the security in IDP camps, and ensuring that women and children in camps were protected from all forms of violence.
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This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2006
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