DAKAR (AlertNet) - Armed escorts may become obligatory for relief agencies working with the U.N. in eastern Chad after bandits killed an aid worker at the weekend, a U.N. refugee agency official has said.
U.N. staff are already obliged to travel with armed escorts but their partners -- both local and international -- are not and most humanitarian organisations prefer not to use guards in order to maintain a sense of neutrality.
"We need to review this situation because actually it is safer to travel with an armed escort even if it is quite heavy for some people to take," Annette Rehrl a spokesperson for the UNHCR in Chad told AlertNet in a telephone interview.
Last weekend Michel Mitna, head of the Chadian refugee body CNAR (Commission National d�Accueil et de Réinsertion des Réfugiés), was travelling nearly 1,000 km (about 600 miles) from the capital N'djamena in the north-east of Chad, in a vehicle marked with the CNAR and UNHCR logos . He did not have an armed escort
A rmed bandits attacked his car and killed him. His driver was wounde. The unidentified bandits managed to escape.
MitnaÂ?s organisation has been working with the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) to coordinate many humanitarian agencies in eastern Chad to assist some 250,000 Sudanese refugees in 12 camps since 2003, as well as 160,000 internally displaced Chadians since 2006.
There have been 51 armed attacks on humanitarian workers in eastern Chad this year with 31 of them (including three deaths) involving the UNHCR or its partner organisations.
"We are targeted because we have cars and the people attacking us want these cars, so far there is no political statement going with these attacks," Rehrl said.
Armed banditry is the greatest security threat for aid workers in this area neighbouring the Darfur region of Sudan.
In a display of solidarity and sorrow following Mitna�s death UNHCR staff in Guéréda where he operated did not work on Monday.
"It affects us because he is a Chadian colleague, working for Chadian refugees, so this is not just an international humanitarian being targeted or somebody from outside but it is a Chadian himself who has been targeted ," Rehrl said.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
