Southern groups call for civilian "safe havens"

A broad coalition of Sudanese civil society groups and indigenous nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) this week called on the United Nations Security Council to create "safe havens" in southern Sudan in order to protect civilians from what it called a government "scorched earth policy".

The call came from the Federation of Sudanese Civil Society Organisations (FOSCO) in a statement issued jointly with the New Sudanese Indigenous NGO Network (NESI) on Tuesday, 5 March.

The safe havens should include all areas of Sudan south of parallel 12 latitude, according to the organisations, who also called on the oil companies working in western Upper Nile (Wahdah, or Unity State), a key oil production area, to cease extraction until peace was achieved in Sudan.

FOSCO is a coalition of more than 20 civil society and NGO relief, rehabilitation, advocacy, development and human rights organisations. NESI describes itself as an indigenous civilian body working to safeguard the rights of civilians in southern Sudan by performing a watchdog role.
[see http://www.nesinetwork.org/]

The civil society groups also called for a UN Security Council resolution imposing an immediate oil sales embargo on the government of Sudan, until such time as peace had been negotiated.

FOSCO also urged members of the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to restrain the Khartoum government from carrying out "its scorched earth policies".

In their statement, the civil society groups condemned "in the strongest possible terms" the 20 February government helicopter gunship attack on a humanitarian relief centre in Bieh, western Upper Nile. This attack had been publicised because there were international relief workers on the ground at the time, but most went unreported, they said.

Their statement alleged that more than 47 people (10 men, 12 women and 25 children) had been killed in the incident, with many more wounded. Previous reports have set the known number of dead at 24, while allowing for the possibility that many more were killed.

The government of Sudan expressed its regret for the Bieh attack, saying it was a mistake which occurred in the context of an escalation in military activity against oil-extraction facilities by southern rebels.

According to the civil society statement, "tens of thousands of people have been sent on the move, fearing daily attacks and the hovering of helicopter gunships and Antonov bombers".

Unwarranted attacks on civilians such as that on Bieh - which occurred barely a week after a similar incident at a food distribution site in Akuem, Bahr al-Ghazal - were "taking place around the clock", the statement added.

It complained of the denial of humanitarian access to victims of war, including the denial of flight permission for aid flights, the bombing of civilian targets and alleged government use of militia forces to facilitate attacks on civilian populations.

The civil society groups said they remained convinced that an end to the war in Sudan could only come through "honest and good-faith negotiation" that guaranteed the right to self-determination of the people of south Sudan.