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'Thousands starving in Darfur' A catastrophe is now unavoidable in Sudan's Darfur region, the United Nations and aid workers say. Some 300,000 people will starve, even if emergency aid is delivered immediately, according to the head of the United States aid agency. Some 10,000 people have died, and a million made homeless in a conflict between rebels and Arab militias. UN officials blame Sudan's government, which they say supports the militias as they rape and kill Darfur's people. Rainy season "If we get relief in, we could lose a third of a million. If we do not, it could be a million," said Andrew Natsios, head of USAid. The figures were based on mortality and malnutrition rates, he said. We admit we are late - some agencies have been so slow, some donors have been so slow, the government restrictions have been so many Jan Egeland UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs "But that is not a prediction, and we hope it is not true." He was speaking at a donor conference, where the UN appealed for $236m for Darfur. The US pledged $188m over 18 months and the EU 10m euros.

Full story at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3772155.stm

Could one of our European debaters please confirm whether the sum total of EU contributions towards this disaster is 10million Euros? I truly hope that individual nations are making contributions and that the EU total is just for the EU organization but not all member states...

another story:

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WHO seeks urgent action to avert Sudan crisis Child death rate triple that of humanitarian emergency (CNN) -- Millions of men, women and children may die in the Darfur region of Sudan unless there is an immediate outpouring of international aid, the World Health Organization warned Wednesday. "A significant increase in disease and death is inevitable without a rapid increase in external help," the WHO said in a written statement. "The catastrophe can only be prevented through an urgent scaling up of the current international response." The urgent appeal came one day before donor nations were to meet in Geneva to formulate their response to the Sudan crisis. The crisis in Darfur began after fighting erupted early last year between the Sudanese government, allied militias and rebel groups. Government-backed Arab militias are carrying out "scorched earth" attacks against black African communities of Darfur, according to the United Nations. The U.N. estimates some 30,000 have been killed in the campaign of ethnic cleansing. U.N. Emergency Coordinator Jan Egeland last week called the situation in Darfur "the biggest humanitarian drama of our time." "This is the most dramatic race against the clock that we have anywhere in the world at the moment," he said. "If we lose, hundreds of thousands of women and children, mostly, will perish."

Full story at: http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/afric....who/index.html

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British-US rift on how to deal with Sudan 'cleansing' By Adrian Blomfield in Nairobi (Filed: 31/05/2004) Britain has said it will not support calls for military intervention in Sudan despite warnings that a government campaign of ethnic cleansing against black Muslims in Darfur could cause 350,000 deaths in the next few months. Alan Goulty, Tony Blair's special envoy to Sudan, said he also opposed sanctions against Khartoum. The comments are likely to widen a foreign policy rift between Britain and America, the two most important western players in Sudan. United States officials are convinced that sanctions are the only way of exerting meaningful pressure on Khartoum to avert a catastrophe that is already being compared with the genocide in Rwanda 10 years ago. But Mr Goulty does not agree. "In the long term, threats of sanctions don't seem likely to produce immediate action and immediate action is what we need," he said. "The more time we spend dithering, the more people will die." The West has tried to ignore Darfur's war, described by the United Nations as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, since it began a year ago. It is now too late to stop the ethnic cleansing. Darfur, an area the size of France, is largely empty. Arab militiamen on horses and camels, armed and funded by kinsmen in Khartoum, have ridden across Darfur, burning villages, raping women and executing men of fighting age. About 30,000 people have been killed. More than a million black Muslim civilians accused by Khartoum of supporting rebels fighting its political and economic marginalisation of Darfur have fled. Most of them languish in camps in Darfur's desert and Khartoum has done its best to ensure aid organisations cannot get there to feed them.

Full story at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...5/31/wsud31.xml

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Sudan: Now or Never in Darfur Africa Report N°80 23 May 2004 This report is currently only available in English, but you may read the media release in Arabic. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS A month after the international community solemnly marked the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide in April 2004 with promises of "never again", it faces a man-made humanitarian catastrophe in western Sudan (Darfur) that can easily become nearly as deadly. It is too late to prevent substantial ethnic cleansing, but if the UN Security Council acts decisively -- including by preparing to authorise the use of force as a last resort -- there is just enough time to save hundreds of thousands of lives directly threatened by Sudanese troops and militias and by looming famine and set in train a serious negotiating process to resolve the underlying political problems and reverse the ethnic cleansing. Since it erupted in February 2003, the conflict has claimed some 30,000 lives, but experts warn that without a rapid international response, what UN officials have already called the worst humanitarian situation in the world today could claim an additional 350,000 in the next nine months, mainly from starvation and disease. Many more will die if the direct killing is not stopped. The international response thus far has been divided and ineffectual. The Sudan government has gained time to pursue a devastating counter-insurgency strategy against two rebel groups and a wide swathe of civilians by playing on those divisions and the desire of leading states not to put at risk the comprehensive peace agreement that is tantalisingly close between Khartoum and the SPLA insurgency on what for 21 years has been the country’s main civil war. The ceasefire signed by Khartoum on 8 April 2004 with Darfur rebels is not working in either military or humanitarian terms. Its international monitoring commission has yet to begin, and plans are woefully lacking in numbers, authority and enforcement capacity. The government's strategy for "neutralising", as it promised, the "Janjaweed" militias -- whom it in fact sponsors and who have done the most horrific damage -- is to incorporate them into its formal police and security structures. The political process the ceasefire was supposed to facilitate was still-born. The majority of the estimated 1.2 million forced from their homes are in poorly run government-controlled Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps within Darfur, where they remain vulnerable to attack by the Janjaweed and have inadequate access to relief supplies. The perhaps 200,000 of these victims who have fled across the border into Chad as refugees are not safe either. The Janjaweed have followed them, and the resulting clashes with Chad's army threaten to destabilise that country and produce a full-scale international war.

Full report from International Crisi Group available at: http://www.icg.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=2765

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Sudan: Darfur Needs Action on Human Rights Donor Governments Must Do More Than Provide Aid (Geneva, June 3, 2004) – Donor governments meeting in Geneva today should address the human rights crisis in Sudan as well as the humanitarian crisis, Human Rights Watch said today. Currently one million people are internally displaced within Darfur, an arid region in western Sudan, and another 110,000 refugees have fled to Chad. All of them desperately need humanitarian assistance. The United Nations has called Darfur “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.” But the root cause of this humanitarian crisis is the Sudanese government’s campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against civilians of three ethnic groups. Only by addressing the human rights crisis can donor governments hope to solve the humanitarian disaster, Human Rights Watch said. “The crisis in Darfur is a manmade emergency,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Humanitarian aid is urgently needed, but it is not enough. A political solution is necessary: the Sudanese government’s ethnic cleansing must not stand.”

More information available at: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/06...dan8725_txt.htm


How many times must the world say "never again" before we actually mean it? Please write, call, or visit your congresspersons, PMs, or other elected officials to remind them of the meaning of the word "never" and ask them to take action....