Darfur's Humanitarian Crisis & Southern Sudan: the problems of peace

Since 2003, at least 200,000 people have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region, and more than 2.5 million have been displaced, often multiple times. Unfortunately, 2006 brought the four-year old conflict to new depths as the ethnic violence continued and spread further into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic after the breakdown of the May 2006 peace deal, which only included one of three negotiating rebel groups, prompting the others to reject the deal, form a new alliance, and renew fighting the central government. The number of refugees and IDPs has since grown, further destabilising Chad and the Central African Republic, and sparking concerns over a regional war developing.

As of late November 2006, UNHCR reported there were 218,000 refugees from Darfur in 12 camps in eastern Chad. To date, the camps themselves have not been attacked, but protection problems are endemic. In addition, UNHCR reports that more than 90,000 people have been internally displaced in eastern Chad itself, at least 15,000 of them since November 2006.

Sudanese militias attacked Chadians living near the border earlier this year, forcing some to flee to Darfur, but now non-Arab Chadians as far as 60 miles from the border have been attacked by Chadian Arabs. Chad’s central government believes Sudan has supported the Chadian rebellion and encouraged interethnic conflict in eastern Chad.

The Sudanese government has been arming local militias called Janjaweed to attack villages belonging primarily to the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massalit tribes, who the government accuses of supporting rebel groups. Khartoum also bombed civilians in north-western Darfur and Chad this fall, killing and injuring hundreds, according to a Human Rights Watch alert published in November.

There are only 7,000 African Union (AU) peacekeepers in Sudan to separate the combatants and it is now well recognised that they are ill quipped, under-resourced and unable to protect such a vast region and are unable to engage militarily. Despite last year’s UN Security Council Resolution calling for a deployment of 20,000 troops, the Sudanese government, after initially refusing, has managed to stall and frustrate the deployment of UN peacekeepers. In November, President Omar al-Bashir agreed to allow a mixed UN-African Union force, but only to assist the AU force.

The Worsening Humanitarian Crisis

Conditions in Sudan’s Darfur region have deteriorated dramatically since April 2006, with increased violence and restrictions on humanitarian aid reaching suffering populations. Four million people in Darfur or two-thirds of the population are now totally dependent on international relief aid, and a growing number, at least 1 million, are now beyond humanitarian reach as attacks on humanitarian aid workers and their convoys accelerate. In North Darfur alone, 355,000 people were stranded without food aid for three consecutive months late last year due to increased fighting and insecurity in the region.

On 18 January 2007, 14 Sudan-based UN agencies released a joint statement  warning that increasing insecurity and violent attacks against aid workers were crippling the humanitarian response in Darfur, leaving hundreds of thousands of people vulnerable and under threat. In the past six months, some 250,000 people had been forced to flee violence, many for the second or third time, and a dozen aid workers were killed, more than at any other time during the four-year-old conflict.

The Darfur humanitarian operation, which is the largest in the world, employing nearly 14,000 aid workers and costing more than US$1 billion (A$1.2 billion), has saved hundreds of thousands of lives since it began in mid-2004. But its work was being undone due to staff being evacuated because of attacks. This reduction of services is leading to a deterioration of hygiene in camps reflected by the cholera outbreak that struck 2,768 and killed 147 people during 2006. Global malnutrition rates are edging perilously close to the emergency threshold. Mortality rates among war victims in Darfur at the height of the conflict resulted in an estimated 10,000 people dying a month. The UN agencies warned the good work to reduce that rate could be reversed if insecurity continued.

Nearly 4 million people in Darfur depend on international aid for food, shelter and medical treatment, but a shortfall of almost 43% left the UN’s 2006 Darfur appeal grossly under funded.
While UNHCR has only recommended 50 Sudanese refugees from Darfur for resettlement this year, the situation has all the hallmarks of becoming a protracted refugee situation and the longer the conflict continues the more relevant resettlement will become as a protection tool.

Ending the Conflict

With Sudan's government ‘awash with oil, money and arms,’ influencing it is difficult, but possibilities do exist to exert pressure on Sudan's protectors, namely China and the Arab League. Indeed, one development is that sub-Saharan African leaders have begun to make known to China their support for an international force in Darfur even without Sudan's consent and their objection to policies that protect Sudan. The US has also made its concerns known to China's leaders, and China itself appears to have begun to realize that the increasing lawlessness in Sudan could endanger its oil interests and that its reputation in Africa could also suffer from its political shielding of Sudan. Another encouraging sign is the role Arab civil society groups have begun to play in calling for an international force. In recent weeks, there has also been speculation in Washington that it will soon resort to ‘plan b’ which may involve sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes against a sizeable number of Sudanese officials, to provide information on violations to the International Criminal Court, to expand disinvestment campaigns, and to introduce financial and economic restrictions, particularly in the oil sector.

Sustained international efforts to find a long-term solution for Darfur must be intensified in order to prevent further bloodshed of innocent civilians and humanitarian workers and diplomatic efforts must be made to resume the peace process.

The Australia governments contribution to WFP of $5 million to provide food aid to Darfurians affected by the crisis, and 510,000 to Austcare to fund protection officers,  is welcomed, but much more needs to be done to alleviate the suffering of millions more people in the coming months. Australia must press the new UN Secretary-General and new US Presidential Envoy on Sudan to take action to promote a political solution to end this "slow motion genocide."

Note: CWS supports that joint Action by Churches Together-Caritas Internationalis Darfur Emergency Response Operation, one of the largest humanitarian programs in South and West Darfur assisting some 325,000 IDPs and people affected by the conflict with some 60 Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox organisations and their back donors supporting the Sudan Council of Churches, SudanAID and Sudan Social Development Organisation, who are the local implementing partners.

Implementing Sudan’s Peace Agreement

After more than 20 years of war and 2 million deaths, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Government of Sudan signed a comprehensive peace agreement on 9 January 2004, which covers the formation of a coalition government, decentralized power, sharing oil revenues and integrating the army. It allows for Southern autonomy until 2011, when a referendum on the South’s succession is to be held.
While it was a momentous step forward, the magnitude of the challenges still ahead cannot be overstated: implementing the peace agreement; reconstructing war-ravaged areas, rehabilitating Sudan’s social infrastructure and economy, and repatriating and reintegrating refugees and displaced people. The SPLM has estimated that it will cost $US 1 billion per year alone, for six years, just to return, resettle, rehabilitate and reintegrate Sudan’s refugees and displaced people. The job of holding in check the ethnic, religious, political and resources conflicts has also just begun.

The biggest challenge, however, remains implementing the Peace Agreement. After 20 years of civil war, the devastated South desperately needs funds to build its infrastructure and form a functioning government, but has not been received its half of Sudan’s oil revenues, as the peace deal requires.  Nor has it received the $4.5 billion that the international community promised to rebuild Sudan. Without this promised peace dividend, and with frustration mounting over the South’s perceived waning influence in the new joint government, southerners may well vote for separation rather than unity in 2010. 
While strong support for UNHCR assisted returns, repatriation and reintegration programs will be needed to ensure the sustainability of returns and prevent secondary outflows,  it is also important to recognise that there will be Sudanese groups still in need of resettlement. Any winding down of the Sudanese intake should thus be incremental. Last year’s closure of UNHCR’s resettlement pipeline out of Egypt, and the subsequent protests and harsh government clampdown, serves as a reminder in this respect.