UN assesses impact of aid groups' ouster on Southern Sudan
A United Nations humanitarian team has been sent to Southern Sudan to assess the impact of Khartoum's recent decision to expel 13 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and suspend three national NGOs.
The decision to bar the NGOs from operating in Sudan came immediately after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant on 4 March for President Omar Al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the mission to the so-called Three Areas of Sudan started work yesterday in the Blue Nile State to review programmes which were run by the expelled NGOs and to identify gaps in the aid effort.
Some of the banned NGOs were involved in significant recovery and development operations, which benefited populations in the Three Areas of Abyei, southern Kordofan State, and southern Blue Nile State.
In a bid to plug the holes left by the evicted NGOs in the country's war-torn region of Darfur, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has provided six primary health centre kits containing essential drugs and equipment for outpatient treatment programmes in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state.
UNICEF has also stepped in to meet shortfalls in water, sanitation and hygiene in the Zam Zam camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs), where people are continuing to arrive.
In West Darfur, sanitation and hygiene promotion along with solid waste management have not resumed in any of the camps, according to UNICEF.
Meanwhile, the African Union (AU) High-Level Panel on Darfur arrived in El Fasher today to meet with the leadership of the hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and senior Government officials in the region. The Panel, led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, intends to determine what more can be done to achieve peace, justice and reconciliation.
More than one year on from transferring peacekeeping operations to UNAMID from the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS), well over 12,000 of the 19,555 military personnel authorized by the Security Council are now in place across Darfur.
The hybrid force was set up to protect civilians in Darfur, where an estimated 300,000 people have been killed and another 2.7 million have been forced from their homes since fighting erupted in 2003, pitting rebels against Government forces and allied Janjaweed militiamen.