UN human rights fact-finding mission allowed to visit Darfur, Sudan

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announced today that its fact-finding mission has been given permission to travel to the troubled Darfur region of western Sudan, where a senior UN official has said there has been an ethnic cleansing campaign against the local black African population.

The five-person mission team from the OHCHR is expected to travel to Darfur – and to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum – within the next few days after the Sudanese Government gave the go-ahead, a UN spokesman said today.

Earlier this month the team spent nine days in neighbouring Chad, interviewing refugees who had escaped the civil conflict engulfing Darfur since early last year.

As many as 110,000 people are estimated to have fled to Chad after fighting broke out between the Sudanese Government, allied militias and rebel groups in the massive and remote Darfur region in the west of Africa’s largest nation.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that the number of Sudanese who are internally displaced within Darfur has swelled to one million, increasing pressure on aid agencies as their relief supplies dwindle.

In a statement issued today OCHA said all funds donated for relief efforts in Darfur have been used up, and it will have to revise its appeal well beyond the $115 million it requested recently.

OCHA staff said they were particularly concerned by the lack of shelter materials, as well as shortages of clean drinking water and overcrowding in camps for internally displaced people.

After briefing the Security Council on 2 April, Jan Egeland, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told reporters that Arab Janjaweed militia groups were conducting a coordinated, “scorched earth” policy against local black Africans.

Mr. Egeland said there were frequent and credible reports of atrocities, including killings and the deliberate destruction of towns, villages, schools, wells and food supplies. He said those targeted were mainly from the Fur, Zaghawas and Massalit ethnic communities.