Sudan expelled the country director of Save the Children, accusing the British aid agency of breaching Sudanese law and interfering in domestic affairs, the Humanitarian Affairs Ministry and the agency said on Monday. Save the Children confirmed it had received two letters from the ministry on Monday morning, expelling their country director Kate Halff and officially warning the organisation.
British charity Oxfam said it had received a letter of warning, suggesting their country director may be expelled. The United Nations said it was pressing Khartoum to reverse the decisions.
"We are very concerned about this situation, particularly given the important role played by the two NGOs in alleviating the suffering of the people in Sudan, particularly Darfur," said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman in Geneva for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Oxfam has been working throughout north Sudan for 20 years and on Saturday the influential governor of North Darfur state praised the agency's work in the country. Save the Children is one of the largest food distributors in Darfur, providing food to more than 300,000 of the almost 2 million in need of aid.
"We can confirm that we have received a letter of warning from the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs this morning suggesting the country director may be expelled and we are following up on this with the ministry," Oxfam spokesman Adrian McIntyre told Reuters.
Both organisations said they would be following up the issue internally and with the ministry.
A ministry statement said Save the Children had breached Sudanese law by issuing a press release saying a government plane had dropped a bomb close to one of its feeding centres last week in Tawilla town, North Darfur, without waiting for confirmation from African Union cease-fire monitors.
The African Union is monitoring a cease-fire signed between two main Darfur rebel groups and the government in April.
After years of tribal clashes over diminishing land and water resources in arid Darfur, rebels took up arms early last year accusing Khartoum of neglect and of arming Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages. The United Nations says the violence, described as genocide by the United States, has triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
The Humanitarian Affairs Ministry said the organisations should not deal with security issues through the media and said they should instead liaise with the government. It said it saw all these statements as indications of support for the rebels who want to continue the war in Darfur.
It also rejected a statement from Oxfam criticising a UN Security Council resolution issued in Nairobi earlier this month and said Sudanese law stated that emergency aid organisations should not get involved in political issues.
"The ministry affirms that this kind of behaviour violates the emergency work law in Sudan and it (the government) will not allow these violations to continue," the statement said.
The Council's resolution said it would consider "appropriate" actions if Sudan did not follow through on its commitments to end the violence in Darfur, an oblique threat of sanctions but weaker wording than in previous resolutions.
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