Urging decisive action against Sudanese war-crimes suspects, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor said on Friday he would announce details of a new case next week against senior players in the Darfur conflict. "I will inform the … [United Nations] Security Council on June 5 when I will present my second case," prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said.
Western governments lashed out at the extension of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest, but the outrage at Burma’s generals was tempered by concern over disrupting aid flows to desperate cyclone victims. Burma has been promised millions of dollars in Western aid after Cyclone Nargis, but this cut no ice with the junta regarding the opposition leader.
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon headed to south-east Asia on Wednesday on a mission to secure more help for cyclone victims in Burma, whose military rulers have finally granted an aid agency the use of helicopters to deliver supplies. The UN says up to 2,4-million people are struggling to survive.
Burma’s neighbours appeared to have reached a compromise with the regime on Monday that would finally allow significant amounts of international aid to reach the survivors of the deadly cyclone, more than two weeks after it struck. An Asian-led task force will be formed to help funnel relief into the isolated country.
Aid was trickling in on Sunday to an estimated 2,5-million people left destitute by Cyclone Nargis in Burma’s Irrawaddy delta as more foreign envoys tried to get the junta to admit large-scale international relief. The junta’s official toll from the disaster stands at 77 738 dead and 55 917 missing.
Burma’s ruling military junta took diplomats on a tour of the storm-ravaged Irrawaddy delta on Saturday as its toll of dead and missing soared above 133 000 people, making Cyclone Nargis one of the most devastating ever to hit Asia. An estimated 2,5-million people are clinging to survival in the delta.
Western powers kept up the pressure on Burma’s generals on Thursday to allow a massive aid effort as relief workers struggled to help an estimated 2,5-million people left destitute by Cyclone Nargis. The European Union’s top aid official has warned that the military government’s restrictions on foreign aid workers were increasing the risk of starvation.
Burma will accept foreign aid but distribute relief itself, an official newspaper said on Friday, after a disaster rescue team from Qatar that arrived in Rangoon on an aid flight was turned back. Outside frustration is mounting at delays by the generals in giving visas to aid workers and landing rights for flights.
The international community pleaded with Burma’s military rulers on Wednesday to let foreign aid workers and desperately needed relief supplies into the cyclone-crushed country. The United Nations, the United States and France stepped up pressure on the junta to open their doors to foreign aid.
As many as 300 000 people may have died in the five-year conflict in Darfur, a dramatic increase over earlier estimates of 200 000, a top United Nations official said on Tuesday. Sudan’s UN ambassador, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, said the figure was grossly exaggerated.
Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability, the United Nations’s top humanitarian official warned on Tuesday after two days of rioting in Egypt over the doubling of prices of basic foods in a year and protests in other parts of the world.
A top United Nations official warned on Friday of ”very grave” humanitarian problems in Iraq, including a lack of food and the internal displacement of more than two million people. ”There are very grave humanitarian problems. The most serious is the internal displacement of the Iraqis,” UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said.
The road from Harar runs for more than 960km east towards the border with Somalia, penetrating deep into the desiccated badlands of the Ogaden desert, the dusty heart of Ethiopia’s war-torn Somali regional state. This is the land that the self-styled separatists of the Ogaden National Liberation Front claim as their own.
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/ 28 February 2008
Mediator Kofi Annan launched a new bid on Thursday for a political compromise to end Kenya’s post-election crisis, bringing the country’s feuding leaders to the same table for the first time in a month. The opposition had threatened to hold mass street protests on Thursday, but called them off after meeting Annan.
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/ 26 February 2008
Two months of violence in Kenya have split the country along ethnic lines and there is a risk of further clashes if the political crisis is not resolved quickly, a top United Nations official said on Monday. Exhausted by a post-election crisis that has killed more than 1 000 people, most of the 36-million Kenyans want a quick political deal.
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/ 12 February 2008
Kofi Annan urged Kenya’s rival leaders on Monday to hold urgent talks to find an end within 72 hours to the political crisis and unrest that has left more than 1 000 people dead. Annan was appointed as mediator by the African Union to try to broker an agreement to end weeks of violence since a disputed December 27 presidential election.
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/ 11 February 2008
The United Nations’s top emergency relief official said on Monday that as many as 600 000 people had been displaced following violence sparked by Kenya’s disputed elections. ”We estimate that 300 000 people were displaced and are now in camps,” John Holmes said, adding: ”There are probably as many displaced who are not in camps.”
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/ 11 February 2008
The United Nations launched an appeal on Monday for almost -million in aid for the hundreds of thousands of victims caught up in devastating flooding in a large swathe of Southern Africa. Floods have already affected the lives of nearly half-a-million people from Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
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/ 10 February 2008
The chief mediator in Kenya’s crisis talks, Kofi Annan, urged Kenyans to be patient on Saturday with a deal to end weeks of violence expected to be finalised in the coming days. ”In negotiations, a deal is not a deal until it is done,” the former United Nations chief cautioned in a statement.
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/ 8 February 2008
Negotiators for Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga said on Friday talks to resolve their dispute over Kibaki’s re-election had moved forward but not reached a final deal. ”I don’t think it’s really going to be a breakthrough, but rather an agreement of principles,” a senior government official said.
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/ 8 February 2008
Kenya’s political rivals tried to inject some momentum on Friday into slow-moving peace talks brokered by former United Nations head Kofi Annan, aimed at ending weeks of bloodshed. Four people were killed overnight in tribal violence in the Kisii region of Nyanza province in western Kenya, two of whom were ”hacked to death”, police said.
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/ 25 December 2007
Diplomatic wrangling dashed hopes for an end to the killing and rape in Darfur this year and a new United Nations-backed peacekeeping mission scheduled to start on January 1 faces an uphill struggle. The combined effects of war and famine have killed at least 200 000 people with more than two million displaced.
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/ 3 December 2007
The United Nations’s top aid official, John Holmes, arrived in Somalia on Monday, calling for more to be done to help the Horn of Africa country where almost 6 000 civilians have been killed in fighting this year. UN officials say Somalia’s humanitarian crisis is Africa’s worst, with one million people displaced.
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/ 17 November 2007
Military ships and helicopters were trying on Saturday to reach thousands of survivors of a super cyclone that killed nearly 1 100 people and pummelled impoverished Bangladesh with mighty winds and waves. Cyclone Sidr smashed into the country’s southern coastline late on Thursday night with 250km/h winds that whipped up a 5m tidal surge.
A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change ”mega disaster”, the United Nation’s emergency relief coordinator, John Holmes, has warned. Holmes said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true.
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/ 14 September 2007
Powerful earthquakes struck Indonesia for a third day on Friday, terrorising thousands of people who were refusing to return to coastal homes in fear of tsunami and falling debris. Seismologists warned that the worst may be yet to come. Experts have been predicting a repeat of the monster temblor that triggered the 2004 Asian tsunami.
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/ 13 September 2007
Ethiopian rebels on Thursday urged the world to bring an end to an army crackdown in the restive Ogaden region, warning that another ”African genocide” was unfolding. The Ogaden National Liberation Front said thousands of displaced civilians had fled to neighbouring Somalia without food and medicine over the past four months.
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/ 8 September 2007
Fresh clashes have erupted between a renegade general and government troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The United Nations said violence in the region was hampering efforts to deliver food to tens of thousands of displaced
civilians.
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/ 6 September 2007
The United Nations fears that the refugee crisis in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could worsen after the escalation of the conflict between government troops and soldiers loyal to a dissident general. Speaking to the BBC on Thursday, UN emergency relief coordinator John Holmes said that the crisis could aggravate the situation throughout the country.
Darfur rebels accused the government of bombing South Darfur on Thursday, the latest attack in an aerial campaign that has driven thousands of people from their homes over the past month. ”There is aerial bombardment on a daily basis — bombing by MiG 29 and by Antonov,” Justice and Equality Movement commander Abel Aziz el-Nur Ashr Ashr said.
Camps teeming with frustrated refugees in Sudan’s Darfur region have become militarised and present a danger that cannot be ignored, a United Nations official was quoted as saying on Thursday. The UN’s emergency relief coordinator said the presence of weapons in the camps made for a potentially explosive situation.