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From: IRIN <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, Jun 2, 2015 at 2:51 PM
Subject: Briefing: Darfur's deepening conflict
To: Elisabeth Janaina <[email protected]>
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humanitarian news and analysis
*Briefing: Darfur's deepening conflict
<http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101568>*
[image: lead photo]NAIROBI, 2 June 2015 (IRIN) - Violence in Sudan’s Darfur
has surged to levels not seen in a decade, with more than 150,000 people
driven from their homes this year alone. The region’s long-suffering
residents are also bearing the brunt of a measles epidemic.
It is a conflict to which the international community appears to have no
answer and which risks being overshadowed by other crises in East Africa
and beyond. The humanitarian and security challenges are vast.
This briefing explains why:
*How did we get here?*
Darfur’s war began in 2003 with a rebellion by tribes complaining of
political and economic marginalisation against the Arab-dominated
government of President Omar al-Bashir. Khartoum’s counter-insurgency
campaign has relied heavily on locally-recruited Arab militias who have
been accused of mass killings of civilians in non-Arab areas suspected of
supporting the rebels. According to the UN, the conflict has left as many
as 300,000 people dead and displaced another 2.5 million.
Over the years, the conflict has grown increasingly complex, with rebel
movements splintering into numerous rival factions – some of which made
peace, at least temporarily - and Arab groups turning against each other
and the central government in ethnic disputes often linked to land rights
and political power.
After years of failed international peace initiatives, and the indictment
of Bashir by the International Criminal Court for crimes including
genocide, the conflict has intensified since 2013 with the government
launching dry-season offensives against the rebels in Darfur as well as the
neighbouring Kordofan region.
*Surging violence*
This year, government troops, including former militias now called Rapid
Support Forces, have attacked numerous settlements in purported rebel
strongholds including the Jebel Marra mountains.
Recent media reports
<http://www.france24.com/en/20150528-sudan-darfur-marrah-mountains-civilians-air-strikes-war-caves-hunger>
show scores of civilians sheltering in caves in the mountains, and telling
of an aerial bombardment near the village of Golo in January that left an
unknown number of people dead and others wounded.
In May, the government paraded trucks piled high with weapons
<http://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/showing-spoils-war-sudan-claims-progress-darfur>
they said were seized from the rebel Justice and Equality Movement after a
major battle in the Tullus area of South Darfur on 26 April.
There have also been several major tribal clashes.
Most recently, fighting broke out on 11 May between Ma’aliya and Reizegat
tribesmen near the town of Abu Karinka in East Darfur state over a
long-running land dispute. The battles reportedly left hundreds of dead and
wounded and displaced thousands. The two Arab tribes have clashed
repeatedly in recent years, despite mediation efforts. Hundreds were killed
and thousands displaced by fighting between the two groups in the same area
last year.
In North Darfur state, a series of deadly attacks this year has fomented
tensions between the Berti and Zayadia tribes and displaced thousands more
people. Berti student leaders reportedly suspect Musa Hilal, a prominent
Arab militia chief, of stirring trouble in the province. Hilal is a
political rival to North Darfur’s Berti governor, Osman Mohamed Yousif
Kibir, who stands accused of recruiting an ethnic militia of his own.
*Displacement*
In all, about 430,000 people have been displaced in Darfur since the start
of 2014, bringing the total in the region to 2.5 million, according to the
UN. Some 1.5 million of those are children. About 3.1 million people are
displaced in Sudan as a whole.
<http:///Photo/Details/201505291554350151/As-the-numbers-of-displaced-grow-fewer-aid-agencies-are-delivering-basic-services>
Photo: Hamid Abdulsalam/UNAMID
As the numbers of displaced grow, fewer aid agencies are delivering basic
services
Many internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Darfur have little prospect of
returning to their homes.
Aristide Nononsi, the UN independent expert on human rights in Sudan, said
after visiting Darfur
<http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15993&LangID=E>
in May that the displaced lived in fear of armed groups and criminality.
While most IDPs want to go back to their homelands, “many interlocutors
whom I met, in particular in North and South Darfur states, remain anxious
about the security situation in their areas of origin… as well as the
restoration of sustainable peace in the region,” Nononsi said in a
statement.
The fighting around Abu Karinka reportedly saw more than 650 homes burned,
and an estimated 24,000 families displaced. Hundreds more families fled
with their livestock to neighbouring North Kordofan state before violence
broke out, according to the UN’s humanitarian coordination body, OCHA.
“The victims are in need of water, food, shelter and medecines,” East
Darfuri humanitarian aid commissioner Abdu Abdelmahmound said on May 15.
According to UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, more than 9,000 new IDPs had
arrived in the Mellit locality alone as a result of the fighting between
the Berti and Zayadia tribes. It said it was also assisting new IDPs in
seven other locations in North Darfur.
*Assistance*
According to OCHA, about 1.5 million of those displaced in Darfur live in
camps or “camp-like settings.”
“The provision of basic services in these locations, relative to the rest
of Darfur, is mostly adequate,” Damien Rance, a spokesman for OCHA in
Khartoum, told IRIN. “The quality of basic service delivery however has
deteriorated over the years as the number of displaced people continues to
grow, fewer NGOs remain to deliver these services, reduced funding is being
channelled to these services, and the political interest of the
international community wanes.”
*Access*
A long-standing problem facing humanitarian agencies in Darfur has been
access to vulnerable populations, particularly in active conflict zones.
After the violence in Abu Karinka, for example, OCHA said humanitarian
partners were standing by to move food, emergency shelters and household
items. However, authorities have denied UNAMID – the joint African
Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur – access to the town to
carry out an assessment.
Around 430,000 people have been displaced in Darfur since the start of 2014
“The government has said that, at this stage, it is providing all of the
aid that is required,” OCHA’s Rance said. “The international humanitarian
community stands ready, willing and able to assist.”
More broadly, OCHA said that access restrictions and insecurity had
prevented it and its partners from verifying the situation of 92,000 of
those reportedly displaced by recent fighting, including in the Jebel Marra
mountains.
*Food Security*
Militias allied with the government have long been accused of adopting
“scorched-earth” tactics, destroying homes and livelihoods in rebel
strongholds and thus contributing to high levels of malnutrition.
According to UNICEF, some two million Sudanese children under the age of
five suffer from chronic malnutrition, of which 550,000 are severely
malnourished and at risk of death.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which resumed work in
Sudan in September after an eight-month suspension, recently appealed to
donors for more funds so that it could expand its operations in Darfur.
<http:///Photo/Details/200810202/Peacekeepers-have-been-denied-access-to-areas-of-recent-conflict-file-photo>
Photo: Heba Aly/IRIN <http://www.irinnews.org/photo.aspx>
Peacekeepers have been denied access to areas of recent conflict (file
photo)
“The ongoing conflict is still taking a heavy toll on civilians,” said
Eric Marclay, ICRC’s head of operations for East Africa. “We want to assist
both the displaced and host communities directly... seed and tools are
needed now to prepare for the next planting season. The additional funding
will also finance medical care and the building of water and sanitation
facilities.”
*Health*
According to UNICEF, frequent population displacement and high rates of
malnutrition as well as very low vaccination rates contributed to an
outbreak of measles in April. The disease has since reached epidemic levels
in 14 states, prompting UNICEF to launch a nationwide vaccination campaign.
Of the 35 reported deaths so far, 25 have occurred in Darfur.
UNICEF country representative Geert Cappelaere said about 50,000 children
are being deprived of humanitarian aid, including essential vaccines, in
the Jebel Marra area.
“Because of conflict, we have not been able to access the population in
some areas for the last four years," Cappelaere told Voice of America
<http://www.voanews.com/content/aid-agencies-struggling-to-contain-massive-sudan-outbreak/2750234.htm>.
"So, we have there a massive group of children that are unvaccinated and
may be one of the causes of the outbreak of measles we are having today.”
*Funding and capacity*
The UN’s 2015 response plan for Sudan seeking about US$1 billion is just 28
percent funded, leaving huge gaps in areas including security and
livelihoods assistance. UNICEF said its Sudan 2015 appeal was only 14
percent funded.
Humanitarian agencies also face a vastly diminished operational capacity
since the government expelled more than a dozen international aid groups in
2009.
According to OCHA’s Rance, the number of aid workers in Darfur has fallen
from 17,700 before the expulsions to just 5,540 in November last year.
“This decline in skilled workers obviously leads to a significant capacity
deficit, particularly when seen against that fact that we have seen more
new displacement in 2014 than in any single year since 2004. Accordingly,
the ability to deliver adequate levels of basic humanitarian services has
been adversely affected,” Rance said.
*Outlook*
The prospects for an end to the conflict appear bleak.
While President Bashir, who was elected to another five-year term in April,
has said he will launch a national dialogue after his inauguration, it
remains unclear which members of the opposition and rebel movements will
take part.
Analysts and opponents say Bashir’s apparent divide-and-rule policies in
Darfur, which have seen the region divided into five provinces, are
unlikely to change.
“These policies have destroyed the social fabric in the western region,
which has led to the numerous violent conflicts between tribes, in
particular the Arab tribes,” said Yousef Hussein of the Sudanese Communist
Party. “The government now holds Darfur hostage.”
Meanwhile, the UNAMID peacekeeping mission has faced accusations of
timidity and of covering up abuses by Sudanese government forces and is
under pressure from Khartoum to scale back its mission or withdraw
completely.
Reports of abuses continue unchecked.
“Our concerns run the gamut from conflict-related abuses such as attacks on
civilians by government forces and sexual violence by the RSF, to
indiscriminate aerial bombing on villages, and the utter lack of
accountability,” said Jehanne Henry of Human Rights Watch.
sg/am/ag
Read report online <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101568>
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