Sudan chairing the African Union?/Task force on sexual abuse/Peacekeepers on Darfur border/Humanitarian aid in Chad
The National Redemption Front rebel alliance in Darfur has said that it will consider AU peacekeepers a partisan force if the president of Sudan becomes this year’s African Union chairman, as he has been scheduled to do next week. Daily Darfur notes that Human Rights Watch has also expressed concern about Sudan’s bid to chair the African Union.
From Darfur Awareness, a post about the connection between water, desertification, and the Darfur conflict: Irrigation and development of Sudan’s rich resources could solve intertribal fighting?
A joint UN-Sudan government task force will deal with the issue of
sexual exploitation and abuse being committed by military personnel, including peacekeepers, humanitarian workers and others.
…
This latest move to prevent and clamp down upon sexual exploitation comes after recent media reports of abuses by UN peacekeepers in southern Sudan, something that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other top officials have adamantly declared will not be tolerated.
Nicholas Kristof, in Citizens’ movement influences Darfur, discusses how citizen activism led to Governor Bill Richardson’s recent trip to Sudan to negotiate a ceasefire, and concludes:
But finally Bashir is confronting people he can’t bully. Let’s have no illusions about how much pressure will be necessary to stop the slaughter, but let’s also celebrate this moment. Bashir has blinked, showing that it just may be possible to fight genocide with moral courage and lawn signs.
(Hat tip: SudanWatch.)
US Special Envoy Natsios is travelling to Chad to meet with Darfur rebels.
A second UN peacekeeping assessment team is heading to Darfur, Chad, and the CAR to lay the groundwork for peacekeepers on the border with Darfur.
Aid agencies are still scaled down in Chad, despite weeks of lull in the fighting, out of continued fear of armed attacks. However, a new Ghana logistics hub has sent its first emergency airlift of relief supplies to Chad. Meanwhile, Chadian rebels say that they have seized a military garrison town in the remote northeast of Chad.