UN: 'Darfur is unravelling'
2006-03-23 09:09
Brussels - Sudan's strife-torn region of Darfur is unravelling and two million people there are increasingly vulnerable to human rights abuse, the UN envoy on genocide warned on Wednesday.
"No one disputes that the situation on the ground is unravelling, it's getting worse," Juan Mendez, special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the prevention of genocide, said.
"The almost two million Darfurians who were vulnerable to human rights violations are more vulnerable now than they were a year ago," he said.
The conflict in Darfur between rebels and militias backed by Sudanese government troops has left some 300 000 people dead and displaced more than two million others since 2003.
African Union (AU) countries sent troops there in 2004 - a force which now numbers around 7 000 personnel - but the peacekeeping mission has suffered from poor funding and has struggled to contain the violence.
Imperative to boost AU force
Mendez, speaking during a three-day trip to Brussels to speak with officials from the European Union's main institutions, said that conditions had notably declined in the last six months.
"Not only are we at a status quo that is intolerable, we are actually back-tracking and we are back-tracking to a situation that is very vulnerable," he said.
He said the main problem was that the government in Khartoum had refused to respect an UN Security Council resolution demanding that it disarm local militiamen known as the Janjaweed.
"If they are not armed, they are incorporated into the security forces to the point where you don't know whether they act as Janjaweed, or police, or military," said Mendez.
The AU has agreed in principle to hand over its cash-strapped peacekeeping mission in Darfur to the UN but the Sudanese government has argued that the move would be counter-productive.
Mendez said it was imperative to boost the AU force and make its mandate more robust so that it can provide "more dynamic, active protection".
"They need to be supplemented by more troops and by greater military capacities and also by a clear change in mandate, so that they are actually allowed to protect people on the ground," he said.
- SAPA