Darfur crisis links
Today, I wrote a column for the CSM about the Darfur crisis. It'll run on Thursday. I did a bunch of research on-line for it, and a little bit off-line. So that you out there in JWN readers'-ville can share some of the resources I found--and so that I can find them again when I need to--I thought I'd put some of the links to good stuff that I found into a post here.
Here for starters is a really shocking graphic from the USAID website that shows the "Projected Mortality rates in Darfur, Sudan, 2004-2005."
I honestly don't know what they base their projections on there, but I assume and hope it's some fairly solid data and analysis. One shocking conclusion they present is that "Cumulative death rate would be approx. 30% of vulnerable group over 9 month period." They project that the "Crude Mortality Rate" (CMR) might peak at the end of this December at a rate of 20 deaths per 10,000 heads of population per day.
20 a day is 600 a month which, if sustained, would mount to 6,000 deaths over 10 months. But after December, they say, the "CMR will decrease as people die or migrate out."
One big issue in delivering aid and keeping people healthy and alive in Darfur is the annual rains. These are just mounting now: July, August, and September are peak rainfall months. Reliefweb has a good portal to a bunch of good maps about the Darfur crisis. In this one, you can see how the "front-line" of the rains is moving slowly northward through the region as I write this. In this one, you can see which parts of Western Darfur are completely inaccessible during the rains, which are accessible, and which--the vast majority, are only "partly accessible".
This map shows the locations of "IDP concentrations and refugee locations" as of June.
Lots more maps and charts there!
Still on maps, Human Rights Watch has a good, clear one showing the region's towns, and the main tribal groupings here. That's part of their broader online resource center on the crisis.
Yeah, I admit I'm a maps-and-charts junkie. But I also like other kinds of resources...
IRIN, the UN's Intergrated Regional Information Network, has a fairly good resource center on Sudan issues in general, with not surprisingly a heavy current emphasis on Darfur. But you can also find out a lot about the South Sudan peace process etc., there.
However, what they have up on that page is not terrifically up-to-date. For the latest news, you do better to go to IRIN's East Africa newspage. When I went there today I found a great interview with Jan Egeland, the UN's deputy secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs, which was posted up there today. It had some revealing things in it. For example:
- Q: What is happening to the areas of land in Darfur that have been cleared of people?
A: The refugees believe that there is indeed ethnic cleansing and [that] their land is being taken over. I think we have more reports actually of a kind of scorched earth [policy] -- and that nobody has taken over. The places have been burned, the wells have been destroyed, the irrigation has been destroyed, the cattle have been killed and the donkeys have been thrown in the wells to poison them, which means that nobody has taken over.
Q: In cases where people have taken over, who are they?
A: It's complex, because some have said that it doesn't fit the legal definition of ethnic cleansing. The same tribes are represented both among those who are cleansed and those who are cleansing.
Q: Reporters in Al-Fashir, Northern Darfur, were told that the humanitarian situation is getting better. Is this true?
A: It is definitely getting better. It is strange to see that there is still the notion in the world that nothing is happening and we?re completely blocked from accessing Darfur. We are reaching some 800,000 people at the moment with some sort of assistance and food.
- Our appeal is to donors to really come with their contributions, to physically give us helicopters [HC emphasis] so that we do not have to purchase or to rent these very expensive tools. There are many Western and Eastern European countries who could give them to us tomorrow, and I am surprised that many countries produce many more resolutions and declarations than actual hardware for our operation.
So we are as much restrained at the moment for lack of resources and logistical hardware as from government lack of access.
- There is always donor fatigue: there are some who are just slow in waking up to new situations and also slow in providing assistance.
We have only three substantial donors here-- the US, UK and some parts of the EU family, and that is it. Some of the bigger donors are surprisingly small, and the Arab wealthy oil-rich nations are nonexistent as donors in Darfur. [Emphasis by HC there. This is shocking!!! Dig into those pockets right now, all you oil-rich princes and presidents!]
We have now launched a 90-day plan of action. If we succeed in implementing that, we will feed a million people by the end of this month and two million in October. But there are three conditions: one, the government gives us increased access, including all the NGOS who work with us and on our behalf; secondly, that the security situation improves for us humanitarian workers and our trucks that are now being looted; and thirdly that we get more resources.
And Reliefweb, which is an information-sharing service coordinated by the UN Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), always has good, up-to-date information from Darfur and the rest of Sudan, on this page.