World

Darfur force 'failing civilians'

by Sanjay Jha | July 28, 2008 at 12:42 am | 154 views | 3 comments | 25 recommendations

SUDAN-DARFUR-CONFLICT-UN-AU-DIPLOMACY-BESHIR

The Darfur peace pact is likely to be broken in abscence of lack of basic equipment such as helicopters and armoured vehicles.

Some African relief agencies have brought out a report and said that the soldiers who had deployed could do much better by, for example, mounting regular foot patrols in camps or consistently protecting women who collect firewood. Sudanese officials says the scale of the violence and suffering has been exaggerated by the west for political reasons.

African aid agencies say the African-UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region is failing to provide adequate protection for civilians.
A report published by a group of mainly African relief and advocacy groups, the Darfur Consortium, said the force was too small and inadequately funded.
It said six months after the mission began, only about a third of the 26,000 personnel promised had been deployed.
The five-year-old Darfur conflict has left some 300,000 people dead.
The African Union-Union Nations Mission in Darfur (Unamid) was set up after the United Nations Security Council promised protection to some four million people caught up in the war between the Sudanese government and rebels.
But Khartoum insisted that Africans should make up the bulk of the soldiers.