Equipment and supplies looted from the UN offices in Kilinochchi, the northern Sri Lankan town under the control of the Tamil Tigers, have been returned, UN officials in the capital Colombo confirmed.
The UN offices in Kilinochchi were ransacked on two consecutive nights between 18 and 19 September, two days after the UN moved its international staff out of the area known as the Vanni under Tamil Tiger control.
The relocation followed a state directive issued on 5 September amid deteriorating security in the Vanni.
The UN said the looting raised renewed concern over the protection of humanitarian staff and assets.
“The UN has drawn this to the attention of the LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] and says that humanitarian assets and staff ought to be protected at all times in accordance with international humanitarian law,” according to a UN statement on 20 September.
[see: www.humanitarianinfo.org]
Three days later, another statement reported that at the behest of the LTTE, the equipment and supplies had been returned.
Plans to recommence work
While all agencies have been advised by the government to halt their operations from Kilinochchi by 29 September, 13, including UN agencies that relocated, are preparing to recommence work to assist people in the Vanni, primarily from Vavuniya, a town under government control about 60km south of Kilinochchi.
Plans are being formalised between the government and UN agencies on operational procedures in the Vanni.
“We are in the process of making arrangements to recommence our work [in the Vanni] as soon as possible,” Gordon Weiss, the UN spokesman in Sri Lanka, said. “We are determined to continue with humanitarian assistance to the Vanni civilians.”
There are between 200,000 and 230,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Vanni, with more than 200,000 needing assistance, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) said in its latest situation report released on 24 September.
 Photo: Amantha Perera/IRIN  |
| The conflict has taken its town on the civilian population |
Some agencies, however, have expressed concern over the security of local Vanni residents who were staff members of UN and other agencies.
“Officially there are no staff [with the agencies in the Vanni after the relocation]. They are ex-staff,” Jeevan Thiyagaraja, executive director of the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), [see: www.humanitarian-srilanka.org], a national umbrella group, told IRIN. “However, their physical safety and that of their family is very much a reality.”
The UN, however, said 21 locals from the Vanni who were UN employees still remained under UN contract.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only international agency with a permanent presence in the Vanni, reiterated the security concerns.
“As fighting escalated in recent weeks, security increasingly became an issue of concern,” Anthony Dalziel, ICRC deputy head of delegation in Sri Lanka, said in a statement released on 19 September. “The ICRC maintains daily contacts with the Sri Lankan Security Forces and the LTTE. This allows us to obtain the security guarantees the organisation needs to be present and carry out its work in the field.”
Local staff prevented from relocating
The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) [see: www.drc.dk] said it could not relocate local staff out of the Vanni due to a pass system introduced by the Tigers that prevented locals from leaving the Vanni.
“It is a terrible situation also for our national staff. We are doing everything we can to be able to evacuate them and hope that we will find a solution soon,” Rikke Friis, DRC’s head of the Europe-Asia Ssection, said in a statement on 19 September. [see: http://reliefweb.int/]
More than 500 local employees of the UN and NGOs in the Vanni could not relocate last week due to a lack of passes, according to the latest ISAC report.
“In the Vanni, over 500 national staff working for NGOs stayed behind as they were not provided travel passes by the LTTE. The UN still has 21 national staff within the Vanni who did not receive passes or are staying because of their families,” it stated.
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