Repatriation proceeds in South Sudan, while people continue to be displaced and worse in Darfur and Chad
The Secretary-General of the UN is not satisfied with Sudan’s response to UN calls for speedy deployment of a United Nations-African Union (AU) hybrid force. Meanwhile, UNICEF warns that displaced people’s camps in Darfur are crammed to capacity.
The UN has opened two new repatriation corridors from Ethiopia to South Sudan. And a Norwegian company specializing in mobile hospitals is starting a major health project in South Sudan.
A UN human rights mission on Monday accused the government of Sudan of orchestrating crimes in Darfur. This report was rejected by an organization of Islamic states. The Daily Darfur writes (the bold part is Quaker Dave’s comment, the rest is from a Reuters news article):
GENEVA (Reuters) March 14 – “Muslim and Arab states on Wednesday rejected a report by a U.N. human rights team that accused Sudan of fomenting crimes against civilians in its Darfur region, and called for a fresh investigation.
“Echoing the line taken by Sudan, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) states said that the fact that the team led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams never got to Darfur had invalidated its findings. [There's a reason for that: Sudan denied them visas! That fact was apparently ignored.] The mission’s report to the Human Rights Council accusing Sudan of orchestrating and taking part in gross violations against civilians in Darfur should be re-done by a team that could evaluate conditions on the ground, top OIC officials said.”
Security continues to deteriorate badly in eastern Chad.
Ethnically targeted violence on both sides of the Chad/Darfur border, growing directly out of the Khartoum regime’s genocidal counterinsurgency war, has created a conflict-affected population of over 4.5 million human beings. Hundreds of thousands of these people will die in the coming months and years. A cataclysm of human destruction has begun that simply cannot be halted, though of course it might still be substantially mitigated. But the approximately 500,000 people who have already died from violence, disease, and malnutrition over the past four years of conflict provide a ghastly metric for future human destruction…
Traumatized Central Africans are spilling into Chad.
On a lighter note, there’s Drima’s post on Funky/Punky Sudanese Hair
According to Hassan, the guy pictured above is from the Umm Bororo tribe and his hairstyle indicates he’s unmarried. Can I confirm if that’s true? I don’t have a clue! Out of the hundreds of tribes in Sudan, I only know the traditions of about 30-40 well. Therefore, even I myself a Sudanese find the above picture fascinating.