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Africa Top Priority for Aid, Attention, U.N. Official Says

United States Department of State (Washington, DC)
NEWS
December 19, 2005
Posted to the web December 20, 2005

By Judy Aita
United Nations
Humanitarian operations in the Darfur region of Sudan are on the brink of
collapse because of the increasing number of attacks on humanitarian workers
and camps, the senior U.N. humanitarian relief official said December 19.
Briefing the Security Council on Africa, U.N. Humanitarian Relief Coordinator
Jan Egeland highlighted three crises on the continent, emphasizing that "the
biggest drama of our time is Africa, not the Middle East, not Europe" and
urging the international community "to do more."
Egeland focused on Darfur; Uganda, the food crisis in Zimbabwe, southern Sudan,
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where the rebel Lord's
Resistance Army (LRA) is cutting off humanitarian access to local people and
refugees.
Aid workers in Darfur are becoming increasingly desperate, Egeland said. The
humanitarian operation that cares for 3 million people could "all end tomorrow.
It is on the brink of collapse."
The humanitarian crisis is being caused by an increasing number of attacks
against humanitarian workers, no progress in peace talks and "outrageous
political and military leaders" who increasingly fight each other, he said.
With attacks from groups inside Sudan on Chadian villages, the problems of
Darfur are spilling into neighboring countries, Egeland said said.
The relief coordinator called the LRA's kidnapping of children and turning them
into fighters as a "20-year-old moral outrage" which has spread from northern
Uganda into southern Sudan and the DRC, and has paralyzed the humanitarian
operations that are trying to help millions in the region.
"The way it is now, it cannot continue," Egeland said. "We need to have more
action. We need to have it now."
He suggested that a panel of experts be set up to investigate "how it can be
that the little groups can create havoc in [the] region and are not stopped"
and find out who is providing funding, weapons and other resources to the LRA.
One country that should be able to feed itself is Zimbabwe, Egeland also
remarked.
"Instead, aid agencies expect to have to feed between 3 [million] and 5 million
people in Zimbabwe in 2006."
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information
Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

   

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