U.N. relief chief Jan Egeland REUTERS/Yves Herman
The voluble U.N. relief chief Jan Egeland is not short on suggestions as to why he has been barred from visiting Darfur in western Sudan, where around 2 million people languish in overcrowded camps.
The ban reflects deteriorating relations between the United Nations and the Sudanese government over the deployment of a possible U.N. mission in Darfur. But Egeland, the U.N.&${esc.hash}39;s top humanitarian official, also says the Sudanese government doesn&${esc.hash}39;t want him to see the latest wave of &${esc.hash}39;ethnic cleansing&${esc.hash}39; against black Africans in South Darfur.
"My interpretation is that they don&${esc.hash}39;t want me to see what I was planning to witness in South and West Darfur, which is renewed attacks on the civilian population,&${esc.hash}39;&${esc.hash}39; Egeland told the New York Times. He said the situation was an "eerie reminder" of 2004, when aid workers were denied access at the point when the situation in Darfur was at its worst.
In fact, key aid workers are being forced to leave Darfur today. The Norwegian Refugee Council has discovered its agreement with the government, which expires today, has not been renewed. So the coordinators of the largest refugee camp in Darfur -- Kalma camp, which serves 100,000 displaced people -- have packed their bags.
Government-imposed obstacles to working in Kalma have been mounting. A few weeks ago, visas were restricted to three days only, so international staff at NRC were bouncing in and out of the area. NRC sources say they hope the U.N. can help ease the atmosphere in some way. We refer them back to the start of this blog.
Egeland was a little more welcome in Uganda, where he spoke his mind about the devastation in the north, which has also displaced 2 million people. The conflict there, he says in an IRIN interview, is the &${esc.hash}39;worst form of terrorism in the world&${esc.hash}39; because 80-90 percent of the population of a large area has been terrorised into camps by violence.
Even in the camps people are not safe from abduction by the cult-like Lord&${esc.hash}39;s Resistance Army, which has waged a brutal 20-year insurgency in the north. Egeland said he was &${esc.hash}39;moved to the bone&${esc.hash}39; when he asked a group of women in one camp which of them had had a child kidnapped -- and they all put up their hands.
Egeland has offered assistance in the form of U.N. military and health experts to help improve the camps. Less welcome was his idea of a special envoy to northern Uganda.
The Ugandan president has apparently ruled this out, but may be open to the idea of an envoy for the entire region. This makes some sense -- after all, the conflict is not confined to Uganda. The leader of the LRA, &${esc.hash}39;prophet&${esc.hash}39; Joseph Kony, and his deputy, are thought to be in eastern Congo. And the LRA has made a congenial home for itself in lawless southern Sudan for many years.
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Several recent articles have mentioned that the death rate in the northern Uganda conflict is greater than that in Iraq. Like the Asian tsunami, Iraq seems to have become something of a measuring stick in the aid world.
Perhaps that&${esc.hash}39;s why NGOs have highlighted the case of Iraq in a report aired in The Independent newspaper that Britain and other Western nations are using huge debt write-offs to developing countries to boost their development aid statistics.
Oxfam, ActionAid and others say that although European Union countries appear to have increased their aid contributions, the figures include enormous write-offs to Iraq in 2005, when Britian, for example, cancelled &${esc.hash}39;350 million (${esc.dollar}614 million) of debt.
This, they say, contravenes commitments made at a U.N. summit in Monterrey in Mexico in 2002 in which they agreed to &${esc.hash}39;encourage donor countries to take steps to ensure that resources provided for debt relief do not detract from overseas development aid (ODA) resources intended to be available for developing countries".
But Britain&${esc.hash}39;s Department for International Development says that including debt relief is &${esc.hash}39;in line with international practice&${esc.hash}39;. &${esc.hash}39;For us, providing debt relief is a way of freeing up resources to tackle poverty - to provide better health services and education. So we don&${esc.hash}39;t think this is against the spirit of Monterrey or detracting from overseas development aid resources,&${esc.hash}39; a spokesman told us. &${esc.hash}39;It would probably take something like U.N. negotiations to change this - and if that happens, targets might have to change too.
&${esc.hash}39;But on the other hand,&${esc.hash}39; he added, &${esc.hash}39;we can&${esc.hash}39;t ignore the aid agencies, as they are our partners and this issue is likely to be raised and discussed further."
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In contrast to Iraq, there was barely a ruffle in the media in response to Iran&${esc.hash}39;s earthquake last week, which killed 70, injured 1300, destroyed 40 villages and is thought to have affected 100,000 people in Lorestan Province. Survivors are sleeping outside, 1,000 metres above sea level.
Perhaps it was because Iran has not appealed officially for international assistance, and the Iranian Red Crescent Society claims to have things under control.
Iran has accepted help from the U.N. and a few other sources, however. U.N. agencies in Iran have donated over ${esc.dollar}450,000. Kuwait has offered ${esc.dollar}3 million of supplies and flown in two plane-loads so far. The OPEC Fund for International Development has donated ${esc.dollar}500,000. The United States offered help but was turned down.
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This Darfur-related cartoon &${esc.hash}39; another so-called viral film slip &${esc.hash}39; has been doing the rounds in cyberspace. Its opening spiel - &${esc.hash}39;Pre-emptive apology: Why wait until the genocide is over to apologize?&${esc.hash}39; &${esc.hash}39; pretty much sums up what the satire is about.
That&${esc.hash}39;s it for now. Aisling Irwin
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