ADDIS ABABA, 8 May 2005 — A leading international rights group yesterday urged African Union to hasten the deployment and increase the number of peacekeepers to Sudan’s war-ravaged region of Darfur in order to help scale back a worsening humanitarian situation.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said the current number of troops in the region was too low in the face of escalating conflict between government-backed militia called Janjaweed and rebels from minority tribes that has spawned humanitarian disaster.
“The African Union’s current force in Darfur remains too small, and the projected rate of deployment of more troops too slow to protect civilians and reverse ethnic cleansing in the western Sudanese region,” HRW’s African Director Peter Takirambudde told the AU in a letter addressed to its Peace and Security Council, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.
“The African Union must quickly build up its troop presence in Darfur,” he said. “Success depends on the African Union’s ability to get enough troops on the ground now to stop ongoing violence across Darfur.”
Last month, the pan-African body agreed to increase the size of its Darfur mission from the 3,320 to be deployed by the end of May to 7,731 by the end of September and appealed to the AU’s 53 members to support the operation with troops and cash.
But the rights group said the devastated region needs as many as 12,300 troops, a figure that was earlier suggested by Jan Pronk, the United Nations secretary-general’s special representative to Sudan.
HRW also lauded the AU for spearheading troop deployment to Darfur, but urged it to seek troops from other countries in the likelihood of delay from African nations that have pledged to send soldiers.
“If the African countries that have pledged troops are not able to deploy them in a timely fashion, the African Union should seek those forces from other countries and request the international community to provide necessary logistical and technical support,” he said.
As many as 300,000 people are believed to have died in more than two years of civil strife pitting government forces and their Arab militia allies against ethnic minority rebels in the region.
The rights group said the Khartoum government had “repeatedly failed” to make good its promises of reining in the militia and resolving the Darfur problem at the negotiating table.
“Displaced persons fear losing their land, but are unwilling to return home because of continued Janjaweed attacks, ongoing burning of villages and widespread destruction of crops,” the letter said. And according to the AU, an estimated two million civilians have been displaced, twice as many as a year ago, it added.
