UN rights chief raises concerns over restrictive law with Sudan’s Government

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour today raised her concerns with senior Sudanese Government officials over a new law restricting non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as well as the effects of a pervasive presence of officials of the State’s security and intelligence services, especially in strife-torn Darfur.

On the fourth day of a six-day tour which has already taken her to Darfur, where fighting between the Government, pro-government militias and rebels has killed some 180,000 people and uprooted 2 million more, Ms. Arbour asked for more access for human rights monitors in detention centres, including those of the national security services, according to UN officials.

Today’s meeting took place in Khartoum, the capital. Tomorrow, Ms. Arbour will travel to Juba in southern Sudan, where a peace accord in 2005 ended a separate two-decades-long civil war that uprooted some 4.5 million people from their homes.

Meanwhile, today in Darfur, 2,500 internally displaced persons (IDPs) demonstrated in the Kalma camp near the African Union (AU) compound, calling for UN forces to be deployed as soon as possible and for compensation for their losses, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) reported.

The IDP representatives handed over a letter in which they complained of increased insecurity in the camp, citing several shooting incidents and the abduction and rape of women, the AU failure to protect the camp, and insufficient humanitarian assistance.

Last week, a senior UN peacekeeping official briefed the Security Council on the Sudanese Government’s current opposition to the deployment of a UN force in Darfur, which he said was delaying major planning for any such operation since it required an on-the-spot assessment.

The Government has indicated that if an agreement is reached in Darfur peace talks now being held in Abuja, Nigeria, it will be prepared to discuss how the UN could help, as it did after the accord that ended the Southern Sudan conflict, when the Council authorized a military and police forces of nearly 11,000 to help rehabilitate the ravaged region.