UN Aid Chief In Chad Warns Of Regional ‘Disaster’ Unless Darfur Problem Is Solved
The top United Nations aid official in Chad, which is home to hundreds of thousands of Sudanese who have fled the
violence in neighbouring Darfur, warned today of a regional “humanitarian disaster” unless the two African Governments
put their differences aside and work together to stop the escalating militia violence.
“What will happen in our view if the Darfur crisis is not resolved is that we will continue to have armed
groups…operating in all the areas around the border, they may continue to weaken Government institutions and…make the
life of the ordinary citizens almost impossible,” Kingsley Amaning, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Chad told
reporters in New York.
If Sudan and Chad do not work together to find a more durable solution, he warned, “we will have a general deterioration
of the stability in those areas and in the sub-region and that will create a humanitarian disaster.”
Mr. Amaning said that over 240,000 Sudanese refugees had fled to Chad because of the crisis in Darfur and these were
being assisted in 12 camps despite difficulties associated with inhospitable terrain, overcrowding and especially
insecurity.
“It’s obvious that the [Darfur] situation is bleak, it is not improving and that is causing us tremendous worry in Chad
because there’s a clear linkage between what we’re doing in Chad, which is trying to save lives, [and this is] put in
danger by the crisis in Darfur.”
He also warned that the “whole scenario” of militia groups attacking other groups in Darfur was now being repeated in
Chad, and he blamed this on ethnicity as well as the “militarization of the region” which has allowed people to have
easy access to weapons.
Mr. Amaning’s bleak assessment comes a day after the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland warned
the Security Council that “a man-made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale” looms within weeks in Darfur unless
something is done to halt the spiralling violence, looting and internal displacement.
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