Sudan’s government has vehemently denied claims by the United Nations that it is forcibly relocating internally displaced persons from camps in the strife-torn western region of Darfur.
“It is the responsibility of a country to relocate its internally displaced persons. We have not violated any international law,” the country’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamid, said at a press briefing in Nairobi on Tuesday.
Hamid said that displaced persons had built informal homes at random in the town of Nyala, but that these had not been supplied with sanitation. As a result, the government had decided to move the refugees to camps outside the town where proper sanitation could be provided.
“We are only transferring people to a better place. Is this a problem?” Hamid asked, adding, “We have had 20 meetings with the UN discussing the establishment of new camps for the IDPs (internally displaced persons).
“UN representatives here have seen the site and have agreed that the new site is better than the old one. They only want to be informed early enough of the relocation, and we have said this is a small problem which we will sort out.”
The press conference came after the UN’s envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, told the BBC that there was evidence of armed forces having forcibly relocated displaced persons from Nyala last week. More than 30 000 internal refugees were reportedly involved in the exercise — while women who were reluctant to move are said to have been threatened with rape.
The African Union has disputed claims that the relocation was forced. The AU has personnel in Darfur to monitor a ceasefire signed in April 2004. “There is no forced relocation. There is nothing like that. The government is talking with the refugees, then relocating them peacefully,” Major General Okonkwo Festus, chairperson of the AU Ceasefire Commission, said in a telephone interview.
The region descended into a political and humanitarian crisis early last year, after rebels from the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement took up arms to protest against the alleged marginalisation of Darfur.
Since then, government-backed Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, have launched what humanitarian groups describe as a campaign of terror against ethnic groups suspected of giving support to the rebels.
The Janjaweed are reported to have torched houses, stolen cattle and destroyed crops belonging to the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes, which have long been in competition with nomadic Arabs over land resources.
UN statistics indicate that up to 70 000 lives have been lost in the violence, while more than 1,5-million people have fled their homes. — Inter Press Service