KENYA: UN's envoy Jan Egeland highlights critical situation in three African regions as he winds up visit

Record ID: 361568

  • Title: KENYA: UN's envoy Jan Egeland highlights critical situation in three African regions as he winds up visit
  • Date: 12th September 2006
  • Summary: (W3) NAIROBI, KENYA (SEPTEMBER 12, 2006) (REUTERS) UNITED NATIONS UNDER SECRETARY GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS AND EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR JAN EGELAND APPROACHING THE PODIUM (SOUNDBITE) (English) UNITED NATIONS UNDER SECRETARY GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS AND EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR JAN EGELAND SAYING: "On Darfur, indeed in many ways we are in a free fal
  • Embargoed: 27th September 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA96OYHNFBXPDVL7P5PFRS05MRN
  • Story Text: U.N. Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland rounded up a tour of three African regions by highlighting the crises confronting these regions on his visit.
    Speaking from the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Tuesday (September 12), Egeland was particularly concerned with Darfur, where the Sudan government has refused entry to U.N. peacekeepers.
    "On Darfur, indeed in many ways we are in a free fall in Darfur at the moment. The Secretary-General has been very clear in the Security Council yesterday. I have myself appealed publicly to those nations, countries who can influence the parties including the government like China, the Arab states, the Islamic states to try to convince the Khartoum government that we need this U.N. force to avoid the collapse (in Darfur)."," Egeland said.
    U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Sudan on Monday (September 11) that its military bombardment and troop deployment in the Darfur region was illegal and predicted further disasters unless U.N. troops were deployed.
    The Security Council in August authorised up to 22,500 troops and police for Darfur, providing the Sudan government agreed, which it has not. It also approved beefing up the struggling African Union force during a transition period.
    The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003 when non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government. In response, the government mobilized Arab militias known as Janjaweed, who have conducted a campaign of murder, rape and looting.
    In the past few months, various rebel groups and bandits have committed similar atrocities. Fighting, disease and hunger have killed some 200,000 people and driven some 2.5 million into squalid camps.
    Egeland also visited Juba in southern Sudan, to hold talks with representatives of the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), government and mediators. He is the highest ranking U.N. official to have done so.
    He secured a pledge from the LRA to release an undisclosed number of women, children and wounded amongst the LRA's ranks as a "humanitarian gesture."
    Egeland said hundreds of thousands of displaced may start returning to their homes over the next few months, with potentially thousands of LRA soldiers emerging from the bush.
    He said he was confident the peace process would continue but was concerned that former combatants may not receive the necessary care.
    "I am not too worried, I think actually the indictments have been an incentive for this process and I think it can remain an incentive for this process but what I am more nervous of is, are we ready to receive potentially thousands of LRA (Lord's Resistance Army) soldiers with their dependants in these camps? Are we able to provide them with enough, we as (the) international community and south Sudanese mediation, are we able to provide them with the food, the services and so on that they require to stay in these places and not return to their old habits?" said Egeland.
    Experts say the LRA have few options, cut off from years of support from Sudan's government in Khartoum, which had used them as proxies to fight its own rebels. The group had also become surrounded by states legally obliged to arrest the LRA's top commanders, who were indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court last year, after a request from Kampala.
    On his trip to Congo, where he visited a refugee camp, Egeland was concerned that international efforts to end a humanitarian crisis in Congo that is killing 1,000 people a day, have reached "make-or-break" point, following a presidential poll in July. Marauding militias and a predatory Congolese army continue to kill civilians in the lawless east, home to most of the country's 1.7 million displaced people.
    "Sexual abuse of women has become a cancer really in the whole culture, in the whole civilization of the Great Lakes region. It cannot be denied that it is happening not in the hundreds but in the tens of thousands of women being abused and it is destroying the whole sort of moral and social fabric of society. It has to end," Egeland said.
    Congo's first free elections in more than 40 years on July 30 were meant to draw a line under a decade of conflict and chaos, but Egeland insisted the international aid effort in Congo was a "marathon" that was only half-run. Fierce fighting in Kinshasa last month between troops loyal to Kabila and Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba, who face each other in an Oct. 29 presidential runoff, raised fears that stability remains elusive in Congo.
    The fighting, which killed at least 23 people, broke out when electoral authorities announced on August 20 that Kabila had won 45 percent of the vote but would still face a runoff against Bemba, who gained 20 percent.
    Under United Nations mediation, the two sides set up two commissions of inquiry to determine the cause of the fighting and to establish guidelines aimed at ensuring the October 29 second round did not descend into violence.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register