Stop forcing IDPs out of camps, UN urges Sudan

Sudan is violating both international law and its agreements with the United Nations by forcing internally displaced persons (IDPs) out of camps they fled to in Darfur, the UN said on Tuesday. In a pre-dawn operation earlier on Tuesday, Sudanese army and police reportedly moved a large number of IDPs from camps near Nyala in South Darfur. "Our current understanding is that between 6,000 and 8,000 IDPs were relocated," Barry Came, spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Khartoum, told IRIN on Wednesday. However, under agreement with the UN, Sudan cannot force them to return to their villages or other locations until they agree to go. "I strongly urge the government to halt immediately all such relocation operations and to facilitate the return of the affected persons from the inappropriate sites to which they have been taken," the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement. In response to an official WFP request for an explanation of the actions of the Sudanese army, the government said the army was protecting the camps from possible retaliation attacks after the kidnapping of 18 Arabic nomads by the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) rebel group last Thursday, Came said. Another humanitarian source, however, told IRIN that security operations by Sudanese army officials within IDP camps had been going on for weeks and had gradually grown in scope. "Their goal seems to [be to] intimidate IDPs rather than protect them," the source observed. "They are trying to force them to return to their villages." George Somerwill, deputy spokesperson for the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, told IRIN that Pronk had also sharply criticized the rebels, saying they were looting aid convoys, closing roads and laying land mines. Pronk is currently in New York reporting to the Security Council on the conflict in Darfur. Annan was very concerned by the deteriorating security situation in Darfur, where tensions have increased following the recent kidnapping and the mobilisation of thousands of Arab militias in West and South Darfur, a statement issued by a spokesman for Annan said. "Many people in western Darfur feel extremely insecure and small groups are fleeing into Chad every night," the UN refugee agency’s spokesperson, Ron Redmond, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. Annan called on all sides to stop fighting, urged the rebels to release the hostages and appealed to the militias to stand down. "The SLA and the militias risk sparking a new round of violence that could claim the lives of thousands of civilians," he warned. Came said that security across many parts of Darfur had markedly deteriorated in recent weeks despite the ceasefire. "The insecurity is shrinking the area where WFP can operate. It prevents us from doing our job," he told IRIN. More than 1.45 million people are internally displaced and another 200,000 live as refugees in Chad because of the conflict engulfing Darfur. The IDPs and refugees have fled attacks from the Janjawid as well as fighting between two rebel groups and Sudanese Government forces. The UN calls Darfur one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.