UN attempts to reverse flight bans

The United Nations system on Monday confirmed that it was in discussions with the Sudanese government in an effort to reverse restrictions on humanitarian flights in parts of southern Sudan.

"We are engaged in discussions within the UN system to get a review of this decision," the World Food Programme (WFP) spokeswoman, Laura Melo, told IRIN.

According to Melo, the WFP - operating within Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), the umbrella operation for UN and nongovernmental agencies operating in Sudan - is, on average, denied humanitarian access to 26 locations in southern Sudan by Khartoum.

Despite the UN's request for access at the beginning of March, however, an additional 19 locations had been placed off-limits to aid agencies for one week only, Melo added.

OLS each month submits a request to the Sudanese government for humanitarian access to a number of locations in war-torn southern Sudan.

Denial of access could prevent some 170,000 vulnerable people from receiving food aid in the 19 additional locations to which access is denied, according to Melo. The extra denials meant that food aid could be denied to a total of 345,000 people in 45 locations, she added.

Many of the additional 19 locations are situated in western Upper Nile (Unity, or Wahdah State), which is the site of many of southern Sudan's oilfields and has been subject to an escalation of fighting between government and rebel forces in recent weeks.

The deaths of 24 people in an a government helicopter gunship attack on a relief centre at the village of Bieh in western Upper Nile on 20 February raised fears that growing violence could be related to conflict over the region's lucrative oil resources.
[see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=23300]

The Bieh attack was widely condemned by the international and humanitarian communities, and the US government said it was suspending peace talks with Khartoum until it offered an explanation of the incident.

It was unusual that OLS had been denied access to the 19 additional locations for just one week, rather than the more usual month-long ban, Melo told IRIN. The government said it would renegotiate flight access to these locations after this one week, she added.

Melo said many of the people of western Upper Nile were dependent on food aid, largely as a result of insecurity in the area.

"We are concerned for the safety of the people of Unity State. They are frequently on the move [displaced] because of fighting," she added.

Other sources told IRIN on Monday that the government could be denying access to locations where they thought there was likely to be an increase in fighting in the near future.

The Sudanese government has said that the additional, temporary restrictions have been imposed to help the government verify the locations of aid deliveries in the south of the country, the Associated Press news agency (AP) reported on Saturday.

"You know we are dealing with some 180 airstrips and locations all over the south. We have asked the UN and are working with them to provide all specific locations and [make sure we all] have the same maps," AP quoted the head of the government's Humanitarian Aid Commission, Sulaf al-Din Salih, as saying.