Aid agencies in Chad have called a two-day aid stoppage in protest at the murder of a French aid worker in eastern Chad on 1 May.
“The humanitarian community has… decided to recommend the suspension of all humanitarian activities, except for essential services, in all of the country on Friday 2 May and Saturday 3 May 2008,” the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Chad, Kingsley Amaning, said in a statement on 1 May.
Issued hours after a British non-governmental organisation (NGO) Save the Children confirmed that its project director in Chad, Pascal Marlinge, had been shot dead by unidentified men at a roadblock in eastern Chad, Amaning’s statement said the two days would be used to “sensitise” aid workers, beneficiaries and the authorities.
“[The stoppage] is a message to the Chadian government and the parties involved in the perpetration of this crime that in the end the people who did this are not doing anybody any favours,” said Annette Rehrl, spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Chad.
UNHCR has not stopped work, Rehrl noted, but several of its NGO partners have. “Aid will continue,” she pledged. “We will definitely not stop our interventions or stop providing assistance.”
Aid agencies working in Chad have been warning for months that the conditions are so dangerous that aid operations for around 250,000 Sudanese refugees from Darfur and over 100,000 displaced Chadians are constantly threatened.
Another British NGO, Oxfam, in April temporarily suspended its operations around Goz Beida in southeastern Chad after armed men looted its office and the next day in a separate incident one of its cars was hijacked.
In June 2007, Oxfam said in a statement that it had calculated at least 70 aid agency vehicles had been hijacked in eastern Chad over the two previous years.
One of the most serious previous attacks on an international aid worker happened in May 2006 when a UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) official was shot during a carjacking in the centre of the aid hub Abeche.
“Nobody was ever prosecuted for that or brought up on charges,” said UNICEF spokesperson Cifora Monier.
The UN and European Union have started deploying troops in eastern Chad with a one-year mandate to protect the 12 refugee camps scattered around the vast, desert region.
“Once they are fully deployed we will see if it makes a difference but it’s too soon to say for now,” said UNHCR’s Rehrl.
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