Moving refugees in Chad, and a deal on adding UN to the AU force in Darfur?
Sudan has agreed to a UN role in Darfur, but the commander must be African, and the peacekeepers mostly African. Drima, blogging from Sudan, remains skeptical. The UK is providing an extra 15 million pounds to the AU Darfur force. Maybe now they’ll get paid.
Contradictory headlines on refugees in Darfur: Sudan: Darfur refugees beg U.N. to move or protect them and Sudan: Darfur refugees reject UN bid to relocate. The one where they reject a UN bid to relocate leads to a dead link, so maybe that headline was wrong. The other article says:
Thousands of people who fled to Chad from Sudan’s Darfur region pleaded with the U.N.’s top refugee official on Friday to either move them or protect them against cross-border raids which have killed hundreds.
More on the refugees in eastern Chad:
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, met with Chad’s Prime Minister Pascal Yoadimnadji, [and] government and UN officials on Thursday to discuss what the UN refugee agency calls one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Guterres said he is studying the possibility of relocating more than 200,000 refugees to an area 600 kilometers deeper into Chad, away from what has become a deadly and lawless border zone.
The dozen refugee camps strung along the Chadian-Sudanese border have been in the cross-fire of army raids, inter-ethnic clashes that some say have been instigated by the Sudanese government and attacks by Chadian rebels who are hoping to oust President Idriss Deby.
On a lighter note, Sudanese henna.
All I have time for today. See you again after Christmas.
December 23rd, 2006 at 9:23 am
Merry Christmas and from what I know the opposition/need for UN troops has to do with different tribes wanting different things. Or maybe it is just a wrong report. Stupid media =)