Natsios arrives on humanitarian mission

The US government’s Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan, head of USAID Andrew Natsios, arrived in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Saturday, 14 July, at the start of a seven-day assessment mission to northern and southern Sudan “to see first-hand the humanitarian situation in Sudan”. Natsios is due to meet Sudanese government officials and UN representatives, visit camps for people who have been displaced by conflict and drought, “and talk a lot with NGOs about how the US can improve and support its relief operations and their work in the area”, US Department of State spokesman Richard Boucher told journalists. The humanitarian situation in Sudan was “of grave concern” to the US, and Natsios was going there to see what more the US could do, Boucher said. Natsios’s programme would include meetings with Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma’il, visits to displaced people’s camps in Khartoum State, and a trip to the drought-affected Sinkat area of Red Sea Hills in eastern Sudan, the official Sudanese news agency, SUNA, reported on 14 July. Natsios would also visit Al-Fashir, capital of Northern Kordofan (a state which has almost 700,000 people affected by drought), and Ed Daein (Al-Duwaym) in Southern Darfur, where over 8,000 people congregated after their displacement by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) offensive in Western Bahr al-Ghazal in early June. Boucher said Natsios was making the trip from the US to look at the situation, including in the north, “and how we can improve the delivery of assistance and make sure the people who need it do, indeed, get it”. In late May, US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a change of policy on assisting the North; before, only people in war-affected areas of the north could receive US humanitarian assistance, but now, according to officials, the US has a policy of neutrality with regard to humanitarian assistance; whether in the north or the south, assistance will be based on need. USAID Acting Administrator for Africa Keith E. Brown emphasised that Natsios’s mission was not political - though he had an agenda in relation to vulnerability and access - and noted that the US administration was still deciding on a diplomatic envoy to the Sudan, according to an AllAfrica.com news report. Improvement of the way humanitarian aid was delivered was also on Natsios’s agenda, and he would be looking at developing “a package of responses” to gaps and shortcomings in the current programme, Brown added.