before United States Secretary of State Colin Powell told the military government that it should end the world’s worst serious humanitarian crisis today, officials said Wednesday, June 30.
Over one million civilians have reportedly been driven from their homes and into refugee camps because of the civil war in Sudan’s western Darfur region, where 15 months of fighting has reportedly displaced more than one million people.
Apparently referring to organizations such as WVI, Powell said he "was impressed by the assistance international aid groups are providing to refugees" at camps in Darfur where they fled from government backed ethnic Arab militias called the Janjaweed, the Voice of America (VOA) reported.
He also reportedly discussed a time frame for the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjaweed and to allow for faster disbursement of humanitarian relief material and visas to aid workers. Speaking via satellite phone from a refugee camp in neighboring Chad, WVI official Karen Homer told Mission Network News (MNN) that the organization is "planning to distribute over two-thousand metric tons of food to about 26-thousand people in the northern region."
The official stressed that "these are people who are basically living under thorn bushes in the open. 80-percent of the people in the camps here are women and children who are very vulnerable," reported MNN, a Christian broadcaster and news service,
CHRIST’S LOVE
Homer said WVI wanted to "share the love of Christ by bringing a cup of cold water in the 115-degree heat here. I think people know that we are a Christian organization and that’s one of the key ways to be the hands and feet of Christ here in this very desperate place." Christianity has been growing in Sudan on the ashes of burned down churches and despite persecution, said Open Doors, an organization helping persecuted Christians.
However WVI and other aid organizations have suggested that moving into the Darfur region, roughly the size of France, is made difficult by fighting poor roads as well as the advent of the rainy season. "Impassible roads will make it even more difficult to get supplies into the area, never mind the personnel," said MNN, which urged its supporters to "pray for the teams and to "pray their actions will pave the way to new ministry with the hope of the Gospel."
But speaking in the Sudanese Capital, Khartoum, Powell stressed the Sudanese authorities must improve security for the humanitarian crisis to come to an end. "We don’t want to keep people well-fed in camps. We want them to go back home. In order for them to go home, security has to be dealt with," Powell said.
UNDERSTANDING
"We came to a common understanding that the Janjaweed must be controlled. They must be broken. They must be kept from perpetrating acts of violence against the civilian population," added Powell. The Secretary of State gave no specific deadline for conditions to be met, but told the Sudanese foreign minister "that international intervention in Darfur remains a possibility," VOA reported.
He spoke after spending three hours touring Darfur where he was mobbed by tens of thousands of refugees in one camp he visited outside the city of El-Feshir, VOA said.
Ethnic African insurgents in Darfur launched a campaign against the predominantly Arab government more than a year ago, because they said their region had been neglected. Human rights groups say, in response, the Janjaweed militias, which are backed by the government, have launched a wave of terror, targeting Darfur’s civilian population.
LITTLE ACCESS
Until recently, the Sudanese government allowed little access to humanitarian workers. Authorities say they will disarm the militia groups in the region, but VOA quoted a human rights worker as saying that these may be empty promises.
"Usually they make promises and then they know that the international community will give them a certain time period to see if they’re really living up to the promises. And then when they don’t live up, then they make another promise," said Jemera Rone from the group Human Rights Watch. "I think we’ve got to the end of this, because the humanitarian situation is so desperate we can’t sit around while they make good on their fifth or sixth or seventh promise."
Last month Sudan’s military government and the main rebel group reportedly extended a ceasefire for three months to clinch a peace deal that would end a separate conflict, known as Africa’s longest civil war, in an other area of the country. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army took up arms in 1983 to demand better treatment for southerners, who are predominately black Christians and animists, from the Muslim Arab-controlled government in Khartoum. Human rights groups hope a similar deal can be struck the Dafur region with the hard-line Muslim government.
