UN peacekeepers in Darfur, despite being severely under-equipped and under-manned, can and must do far more to protect civilians in the war-torn Sudanese region, aid groups said in a report yesterday.
The joint UN-African Union force known as UNAMID is “in danger of becoming the world’s latest broken promise,” said the report by the Darfur Consortium, a coalition of more than 40 aid groups operating in Africa.
This is because the Sudanese government is failing to let it deploy fully, because the UN and the African Union have not given it their full political backing, and because donor countries have not fulfilled their pledges to support the mission, it said.
But despite this, the force, which has shown “some small examples of the positive impact it could have in improving lives in Darfur,” could be doing a lot more while it waits for its full deployment, said the Darfur Consortium.
The Darfur conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum and state-backed militias.
The UN has said that 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have been displaced. Khartoum puts the number of dead at 10,000.
The UNAMID mission took over from a small African Union force on Dec. 31, but only 7,600 troops and 1,500 police have been deployed, barely a third of the projected total of 19,500 soldiers and 6,500 policemen.
The Darfur Consortium report said that “while UNAMID does not have the capacity to respond to large-scale fighting, it must begin to respond forcibly to the daily, smaller attacks on civilians.”
It should begin accompanying men and women to protect them from attack when they go looking for firewood or to markets.
It must also “increase UNAMID presence across Darfur, expand patrols inside and outside of camps [for displaced people],” the report urged.
The consortium urged donor countries to back their pledges and deploy the troops they promised and asked the UN and the AU to give the force their full political backing, and requested Khartoum to allow deployment.
It said that “donor countries must provide the necessary basic equipment, including 18 transport helicopters, at least four more tactical helicopters and six transport vehicles.”
Seven peacekeepers died and 22 were wounded in an ambush by heavily armed militia on July 8, the deadliest in a series of attacks on UNAMID personnel.
UN officials said on Friday that Sudan government planes had bombed Darfur this week despite a highly publicized peace pledge from Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir during a visit to the region.
Also See: [SOCIETY] : Three men, three motorbikes, one dream
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS