| GENEVA — The first reports of government-backed atrocities against civilians in western Sudan’s Darfur region began filtering out just over one year ago. The massive displacement caused by people fleeing their homes is now “one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises,” says James Morris, executive director of the UN’s World Food Program.
“This is a very, very serious humanitarian crisis,” Morris said at a London news conference on May 4. “In Darfur about a million people in the most violent way have been driven from their homes. About half of them are now in camps, and half of them are still wandering around in the hills and who knows where.”
Around 10,000 people are believed to have died in the Darfur region in the latest conflict between Sudan’s government and two rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
Morris led a UN delegation to Sudan and Chad to assess the consequences of the Darfur conflict between mainly black Sudanese rebels and government-backed Arab militiamen, an activity described as ethnic cleansing.
Two years ago, similar accounts of atrocities against civilians in the Upper West Nile prompted a team of Sudanese and European humanitarian aid workers to travel to the area and investigate them.
“We needed to break the wall of silence,” said Nicholas Strand, one of the team members. He noted that the World Council of Churches (WCC) had been “an anchor in a deeply complex situation.” The WCC with its general secretary Sam Kobia, a Kenyan, has played a pivotal role in brokering a peace settlement in Sudan.
Strand last week opened an exhibition, “Between the Streams,” at Geneva’s Ecumenical Center, where the WCC headquarters are based. The exhibition takes a hard look at the conflict and the consequences for civilians in this oil-rich and war-torn region of Sudan.
He said the images in the exhibition, produced by the Danish-based aid and development agency DanChurchAid, reflected what “we were hearing two years ago — similar stories of atrocities of military might being used against civilians (in the Upper Western Nile region) that had been kept secret, much like Darfur.”
The fragility of the cease-fire agreement in Darfur has triggered an exchange of accusations between the rebel groups and the Sudanese government. The rebel factions have accused the government of breaking the cease-fire by backing militias and bombing villages. In turn, the government has accused the rebels of attacking its forces.
Still, Abel Alier, a vice-president of Sudan from 1971 to 1981, said referring to a peace agreement brokered for the south of Sudan: “The resolution to the issue is around the corner in my view.” He was speaking at a peace seminar relating to Sudan hosted in Geneva by the World Council of Churches, to coincide with the exhibition.
A lawyer acting on behalf of Christians who live mainly in the south of Sudan, Alier sits on the Permanent Court of International Arbitration in The Hague. He noted that the government of Sudan and the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army, had brokered a peace in other parts of the country.
“The two parties and their leaders have publicly stated that there can be no return to war and that the peace process must go all the way in the shortest possible time,” Alier said, adding that despite its fragility, this agreement could be used as a model in the western part of the country, including Darfur.
The US-based United Methodist News Service has meanwhile reported the top mission executive of the United Methodist Church, the Rev. R. Randy Day, saying, “Christians, including United Methodists, cannot stand idly by as the shadow of what may become genocide spreads.”
The news service also reported that Bishop Joseph Humper of Sierra Leone, a director of the New York-based mission agency, sent a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, urging quick UN action to ward off a human catastrophe in the Sudan.
The Sudan Council of Churches and Norwegian Church Aid, both members of Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, a global alliance of churches and other agencies, have issued an emergency appeal for assistance to those displaced by the conflict.
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