International donors are turning their backs on Sudan's crisis-torn Darfur region, putting at even greater risk the lives of people who are already victims of conflict and banditry, UNICEF said on Wednesday.
Dan Toole, head of emergency programmes for the United Nations' children's fund, said large parts of the vast region were off limits to aid workers as government forces and local militias battled each other as peace talks faltered.
"Donors are just not coming up with the money. I can understand that they are fed up. But this is people's lives. I told the American government, the British government and others decreases in funding equals increased mortality," Toole said.
"The peace process isn't moving forward, security is deteriorating - we have no access to the area of the border with Chad, there are parts of south Darfur you can't even travel anymore - and donors have not kicked in adequate funds."
Toole said the UN operation in Darfur had received less than a third of the funds it needed to operate in the area the size of France where tens of thousand of people have been killed and 2 million forced to flee during three years of fighting.
Toole urged the international community, which took a long time to react to the emerging humanitarian crisis, to ramp up the pressure on all sides.
"What has to happen is a political settlement. The international community needs to put additional pressure on to get that settlement," he said.
"Humanitarian action can never substitute for a solution to a political crisis. We will always have the fallout, but we can't solve the political problem.
African heads of state will push the warring parties to clinch a peace agreement at a meeting on Saturday in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
Jan Egeland, the United Nations' humanitarian affairs chief, was this week forced to abandon a bid to visit Darfur when the government in Khartoum refused him permission.
He complained he was barred because the government did not want him to see quite how bad matters had become.
Toole said that in neighbouring Chad, where thousands of Darfurian refugees have fled to camps to escape the fighting, UNICEF had run out of donor money and been forced to dig into its own reserves.
"That is basically because I don't see it getting better in Darfur and I can't afford not to have a presence with staff, with radios, with vehicles ready on the Chadian side," he said.
Comments
Comments are closed.