05131
March 8, 2005

World is failing Sudan, UN official says

Most who pledged money, other aid aren’t coming through

by Fredrick Nzwili
Ecumenical News International 

NAIROBI — United Nations aid chief Jan Egeland said last week that the world is committing a historic mistake by failing to promote peace in southern Sudan.

     Churches and peace groups in the troubled African nation say sluggish follow-up on aid pledges has worsened their feeling of abandonment.

     “People are returning to southern Sudan,” the Rev. Anthony Bangoye, general secretary of the Nairobi-based Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Regional Conference, told Ecumenical News International. “There are huge needs, but the world is not sending support. We don’t understand why.”  

     Egeland visited the area on March 5, touring a country where one of Africa’s longest and bloodiest conflicts recently seemed to have ended. He said the UN is not getting the money it needs to help returning Sudanese refugees and war‑weary citizens.  

     “I fear the world is making an historic mistake here,” Egeland said in an interview broadcast on British Broadcasting Corporation radio. “Now we have a peace agreement. Now we have three, four months of cementing that peace agreement. The world has to respond. It is unbelievable they are waiting.”

     Sudan needs about $500 million to meet its immediate needs, but has received just $25 million in the two months since the historic peace agreement was signed. 

     The Rev. Fred Nyabera, acting director of the Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa, urged the international community to sustain the momentum that existed just before the agreement was signed, bringing a fragile peace in a country where 2 million people have died in the civil war and 5 million have been routed from their homes.  

     “The world should not relax the good will if we are to see the positive side of the peace agreement,” Nyabera said, noting that his church group plans to train Sudanese regufees to serve as “messengers of peace” when they return to their homes.