The Security Situation: Violence Disrupts Delivery of Aid in Darfur
28 August 2007
Darfur is dangerous for everybody. But increasingly, aid workers are getting attacked.
In Darfur and eastern Chad, more than 4.5 million people rely on humanitarian aid. But getting help to the people who need it has grown increasingly difficult because of the ongoing violence in the region—including targeted attacks on aid workers.
Thirteen of them, including an Oxfam staff member—Noraldeen Abdalla Nourein—have been killed in the last 13 months. Nourein, a young father of four children, was one of our drivers. He worked in the remote villages around the town of Saraf Omra in North Darfur. His job was to ferry aid workers and their equipment to people in dire need of clean water and safe ways for disposing of their wastes.
In May, 2006, while collecting sand to construct a well, Nourein was abducted by armed men during the hijacking of an Oxfam truck. Seven weeks later, Oxfam learned that he had been killed in a flash of fighting in West Darfur as he was trying to make his way home from Chad where it is believed he had been taken and held.
Incidents against aid workers and operations are now occurring on a daily basis. Humanitarian vehicles are regularly hijacked. Staff members from different agencies face frequent assault, intimidation, abduction, robbery, and attacks with guns. Robbers break into the offices and compounds of aid agencies.
What happened last December at Gereida camp is a grim example. The camp, in South Darfur, is the largest one in the region. About 130,000 people now live there. Armed men broke into the offices of Oxfam and other aid groups. They stole vehicles and money. They severely beat one of our staff members and raped a female worker from another aid agency. And the men pointed guns at the heads of other staff members as they pretended to execute them. After that, Oxfam decided it could no longer work in that camp. It just wasn't safe enough.
A peacekeeping force known as the African Union Mission in Sudan has troops on the ground right now. But the force doesn’t have enough money or enough support from the rest of the world to do its job effectively. Put in place to help protect civilians, the mission itself has increasingly come under attack. Ten African peacekeepers have been shot dead since February, and others have been intimidated, robbed, and abducted.
The United Nations recently passed a new resolution creating a stronger and larger force that will be made up of troops from both the UN and from the African Union. But the troops won't get to Darfur for at least another year. In the meantime, attacks on people in Darfur are continuing. The only way their lives will get better now is if world leaders do more to pressure the different armed groups and get them to agree to a cease-fire.
All parties to the conflict bear responsibility for this violence. It is preventing more than half a million people from getting the help they need because aid groups can’t reach them. With roads unsafe to use because of hijackings, aid workers can only reach many places by helicopter. But the helicopters only travel to the larger camps and towns, leaving small villages and rural areas to fend for themselves.
Despite the deteriorating security situation, Oxfam is still helping about 500,000 people in Darfur and Chad by providing them with water, sanitation services, and public health outreach. In the meantime, Oxfam is calling on everyone involved in the conflict to agree to a ceasefire—and stick with it.
