NGOs accuse government of “extortion”

Staff of some of the NGOs expelled from Sudan last month have accused the government of “extorting” large sums of money from them. Khartoum has defended its demands, saying those who failed to pay what it called “compensation” might be jailed.

“They asked us to pay an exorbitant amount of money... [and said]: ‘We have your passports. Once you agree to pay, you can leave the country’,” said Jane Coyne, head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)-France, one of 13 aid agencies ordered to leave Sudan for their alleged provision of information to the International Criminal Court. On 4 March the ICC indicted Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On 19 March, Sudan’s Labour Ministry ordered all of the expelled agencies to pay their local staff members six months’ severance pay, rather than the one month in lieu of notice that the law stipulates in most cases.

“They went beyond their mandates. So the government has to take action,” Labour Minister Alison Monani Magaya said. “We have sufficient evidence they have done wrong.”

The extra pay-outs amount to $11.5 million for the 13 organisations, in addition to US$10.6 in usual termination-without-notice payments and $20.3 million in seized assets, NGO sources said.

“The word I like to use is extortion…That’s all money that at the end of the day has to come from donors that would have otherwise gone for programmes in Darfur,” an aid source said on condition of anonymity.

“It’s absolutely maddening that we would have to pay this and that the government is just going to get away with it. There’s no recourse. There’s no retribution. There’s no penalty for the government. There’s nothing.”

Passports confiscated

Photo: IRIN

Aid workers at a past food distribution in Darfur: Some NGOs have accused the government of extortion

MSF International said in a statement that the Sudanese authorities had confiscated departing staff members’ passports until just a few hours before they left. This “effectively put them in a hostage situation.” Bank accounts were also frozen at times.

Most of the expelled NGOs have agreed to the government’s demands so as to ensure their staff could leave Sudan and to avoid potential detention or physical attack by members of the public. Local media and government officials - as well as several speeches by the president - have repeatedly referred to NGO “spies” and “thieves”.

“We felt like there wasn’t a choice,” said Reshma Adatia, country director for MSF-Holland. “The [other] concern was instead of taking it out on us, they might take it out on our [national] staff.”

The government dismissed claims of harassment and scare tactics, saying the passports were being held for the purpose of making exit visas. “Nobody harassed them,” Ahmed Adam, director-general of NGOs at the government’s Humanitarian Aid Commission, said. “Some NGOs are saying that the government cancelled the registration without reason. If you want to defend yourself, you can take the case to court.”

Mohamed Yousif Almustafa, state minister of Labour, warned that the remaining aid workers could be detained or put on trial if their organisations did not pay.

Almustafa, who owes his position to his membership of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, a former rebel group which joined the government after a 2005 peace deal, did agree the payments were “unfair”.

“It was not their [the NGOs’] move. They didn’t expel the people. The government did that.”

Assets seized

Photo: IRIN

Displaced women at a camp in Nyala, west Darfur - file photo

MSF also expressed concern over the use of seized assets. Some aid workers alleged government officials were driving their vehicles, wearing their clothes and selling their laptop computers. One aid worker said even curtains from a residential compound were taken.

Agreements between Sudan and NGOs state that humanitarian assets brought into the country are Sudan’s property once the aid agencies leave, but MSF worried about how items such as satellite phones and four-wheel-drive vehicles would be used.

“A lot of our assets are now in the possession of National Security, who I consider to be party to the conflict,” MSF’s Coyne said.

Dangerous precedent

Coyne said she was “gravely concerned” by the precedent the government was setting by demanding money from aid organisations.

“That was part of the rationale for why I would be willing to consider accepting the danger of being arrested in a country like Sudan. Somebody has to say that this isn’t right and it’s not acceptable.”

“If this was another government, people would have spoken out long, long before,” said Ed Schenkenberg, coordinator of the Geneva-based International Council of Voluntary Agencies, a coalition of humanitarian NGOs whose membership includes nine of the 13 expelled agencies.

Even before the payments were made, aid workers expressed concerns over a shrinking humanitarian space and said the threat of expulsion could deter them from speaking out or doing sensitive work.

“There is a climate of fear and I am concerned about what that means for all agencies to provide appropriate aid for populations in Sudan,” Adatia of MSF-Holland said.

Schenkenberg said: “The issue of severance payments and, in general, the way this expulsion is taking place is not just the concern of the NGOs being expelled, but the whole humanitarian community.”

ha/cb