SUDAN: UN human rights mission heads for Darfur

NAIROBI, 22 April 2004 (IRIN) - A fact-finding mission from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) left Geneva on Tuesday for western Sudan's Darfur region to investigate the human rights situation there. The OHCHR said in a press statement that the five-member team was travelling to Sudan at the invitation of the Sudanese government. It was due to arrive in the capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday, and then travel to Darfur on Wednesday. The statement said Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan had sought assurances from the Sudanese government that the team "could visit any place it wanted, talk to anyone it wished, and be assured of security during its tour". It noted that the team had already spent nine days in neighbouring Chad, interviewing Sudanese refugees who had fled the conflict in Darfur. The refugees had raised "serious allegations of a troubling nature", which had been submitted to Ramcharan in a report. In an interview with IRIN on 2 April, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland described what was happening in Darfur as one of the world’s "most forgotten and perhaps most neglected humanitarian crises" with "scorched-earth tactics" being employed there. He called for an immediate ceasefire, unimpeded humanitarian access, a restoration of law and order, and prompt and generous donor support. Sulaf al-Din Salih, the commissioner-general of Sudan’s Humanitarian Aid Commission, subsequently rejected such accusations about Darfur, telling IRIN that the international community had been misinformed about the reality there. The accusations, he added during an interview in Khartoum, were part of a "political campaign" against the Sudanese government and people. The Darfur conflict, which erupted early last year between the Sudanese government and militias allied to it on the one hand and two rebel groups on the other hand, has displaced about one million people while some 110,000 others have fled to Chad.