UNITED NATIONS, 16 March 2005 — The UN emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, estimates that more than 180,000 people have died in Sudan’s Darfur from hunger and disease over the past 18 months, his spokesman said on Monday. The deaths do not include people killed during ongoing violence in Sudan’s arid western region, said Brian Grogan.
Last week, Egeland said that earlier estimates of 70,000 dead from last March to late summer were too low, telling a news conference: “Is it three times that? Is it five times that? I don’t know but it is several times the number of the 70,000 that have died altogether.” Egeland now estimates that an average of 10,000 people have died each month over the past year and a half from malnutrition and disease, Grogan said.
The human rights group Amnesty International has said it believes 50,000 people have died from violence. Conflict has raged in Darfur for more than two years with rebel groups fighting the government for power and resources. In response, the government has armed some militia. The most brutal one, known as the Janjaweed, has carried out a scorched earth campaign, killing, raping and driving 2 million people from their homes.
The UN Security Council this week expects to adopt a resolution that would authorize a 10,000-member peacekeeping force in southern Sudan to monitor a landmark accord that ended 21 years of civil war. On Darfur, China and Algeria have not yet agreed to US proposals for a travel ban and asset freeze on those who impede the peace process, conduct offensive military overflights or are responsible for atrocities.
Council members also are at odds over where to try cases of gross human rights violations. The United States is opposed to the International Criminal Court in The Hague and instead has proposed a new tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania. No other council member supports that proposal. Nearly 2 million people have been forced to leave their homes since the conflict broke out, and around 200,000 have fled across the border to Chad.
Sudan on Monday rejected international pressure over Darfur at a meeting of the UN commission on human rights, warning any move to criticize it at its annual session here could backfire. “Unmeasured, uneven and unbalanced pressure and signals have exacerbated the already volatile situation in Darfur,” Sudan’s Justice Minister Ali Yassine said in a speech to the 53-strong committee which began its 61st annual session in Geneva on Monday.
“Any undue pressure on the government of national unity will retard its ability to implement the comprehensive peace agreement,” he said. “This in turn will impede the benefits of peace from reaching the Sudanese people. Let us give peace in the Sudan a positive environment in which to take root”.
