UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths warned in a statement released Wednesday night that the situation in the region is very serious: children dying in hospitals, children and mothers suffering from malnutrition, camps for displaced people burned down and sexual violence increased.
He deplores the spread of intra-regional violence in Darfur that threatens to reignite the ethnic tensions that fueled the deadly conflict there 20 years ago.
‘never again’
A top UN official highlighted reports of ethnic killings in the West Darfur capital El Geneina and stressed that Darfur was rapidly turning into a “humanitarian disaster”.
The world cannot allow this to happen,”not again“, said Mr. Griffiths.
Waste money
The conflict continues to wreak havoc on people across the country. The UN World Food Program (WFP) said on Friday that an additional 2.5 million are expected to slip into the family in the next month.
WFP has provided food aid to almost a million people in 14 of the 18 states to start operations on May 3; The UN agency plans to extend support to 5.9 million people by the end of the year.
UN rights chief calls for accountability
The killers of West Darfur Governor Khamis Abdullah Abbakar and their commanders must be held accountable for their crimes, the UN High Representative for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said on Friday.
Governor Abbakar was killed on 14 June a few hours after he was arrested by the Rapid Response Force (RSF) – which for two months has been fighting heavily against the national army – in the capital West Darfur El-Geneina, where inter-tribal violence between tribes. has risen rapidly since the military parade began.
The governor himself belongs to the Massalit region and OHCHR expressed concern about him surprise rise in hate speech in West Darfur against Massalit and Nuba tribes.
