The Darfur Consortium

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Darfur in the News

U.S. and European media


March 11, 2023

Reuters: Obama condemns Khartoum for expelling aid groups. President Barack Obama on Tuesday condemned the Sudanese government's decision to expel aid groups, saying it risked creating an even greater humanitarian crisis in its western Darfur region. Sudan expelled 13 aid groups after the International Criminal Court charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with war crimes in Darfur, where 4.7 million people rely on foreign assistance for food, shelter and protection from fighting. "We have a potential crisis of even greater dimensions than what we already saw," Obama said in his first response to Khartoum's action last week. Obama made the remarks after wide-ranging talks with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the White House, their first meeting since Obama was sworn into office on Jan. 20. Obama said much of their conversation was devoted to Darfur, and he had impressed on Ban the importance of the international community making clear to Khartoum it was "not acceptable to put that many people's lives at risk."

Associated Press: US Urges Protest of Darfur Aid Group Expulsions. The United States is urging leading African, Arab and Muslim groups to protest Sudan's ordering aid organizations out of Darfur, an expulsion it says threatens the lives of more than a million Muslims. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said Tuesday the African Union, the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference must tell the Sudanese government to reverse the expulsion of the largest humanitarian organizations in conflict-wracked Darfur. ''If this decision stands, we can expect over a million people to be in immediate risk of losing their lives and the responsibility for that decision lies squarely with the government of Sudan,'' Rice told reporters. ''I think it's imperative that the African Union and its member states, the OIC, the Arab League come together and deliver a very clear message to the government that they will not tolerate and stand by while over a million African Muslims are at risk of urgent death,'' Rice said.

Reuters: U.N. says paralysed in Sudan without aid partners. The United Nations relies so heavily on outside groups to deliver aid in Darfur that Sudan's expulsion of 16 non-governmental organisations has paralysed as much as half of its programmes, officials said on Tuesday. The expelled groups -- whose computers, cars and equipment were also confiscated by Sudanese authorities -- employed 6,500 aid workers in Darfur, where 4.7 million people rely on foreign assistance for food, shelter and protection from fighting. "Roughly 50 percent of aid delivery is affected," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva. "The expulsions will have immediate effects for some distributions, and in the coming weeks for others."

 

 

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