| AID AGENCIES in Sudan were anxious this week about how they would continue to help refugees from Darfur, after UN agencies in the country increased their own security and pulled out non-essential personnel.
The UN’s action springs from the fear it could be linked with the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor in The Hague to call for the arrest of the President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of genocide. It was also an immediate response to the attack on 8 July on a convoy from UNAMID, the joint UN/African Union peace-keeping operation in Darfur, in which seven peacekeepers were killed, and more than 20 wounded.
“The UN action is very serious for their own humanitarian efforts and also for other NGOs, who need their help with air transport,” said Robert Hayward of Christian Aid from Khartoum.
Thor-Arne Prois from Norwegian Church Aid, also speaking from Khartoum, said on Tuesday that his agency was helping 350,000 people in Darfur. The UN move meant that his organisation had reduced its staff levels because of the difficulty of evacuating them in an emergency. But he said it was the attack on UNAMID troops last week rather than the ICC decision which was the main cause of the increased security.
Church leaders, however, warned that the ICC decision could trigger a backlash. “Everybody is on the alert. Demonstrations have already started in Khartoum,” the Roman Catholic Apostolic Administrator of the Darfur region, the Rt Revd Antonio Menegazzo, said on Tuesday.
The UN agencies acted after President al-Bashir was accused by the ICC prosecutor, Luis Moeno-Ocampo, of crimes against humanity, genocide, and of being a war criminal. He has now called for the President’s arrest, having been asked by the UN Security Council in 2005 to investigate the situation in Darfur.
Mr Moeno-Ocampo said he had found reasonable grounds to believe that President al-Bashir “intends to destroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups as such”. His forces had attacked their towns and villages, killed, raped, and tortured them, and destroyed their means of livelihood.
At least 2.7 million people had fled. As they did so, they were harried, and when they arrived at the government camps, they were not safe, either from attacks from outside or from within. The attacks were aimed at their mental and physical destruction, and help was denied them.
Those in the Sudanese government who opposed this genocide were dismissed, and some were imprisoned; those who approved were promoted. “His motives were largely political. His pretext was ‘counter-insurgency’. His intent was genocide,” Mr Moeno-Ocampo wrote.
The ten-page summary cited evidence of stories of gang-rape and the rape of children. “They use rape to kill the will, the spirit, and life itself,” the Prosecutor said.
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