UN, African Union envoys arrive in Sudan in bid to revive Darfur peace process

UN, African Union envoys arrive in Sudan in bid to revive Darfur peace process

12 February 2007 -- The Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Darfur andhis African Union (AU) counterpart have arrived in the Sudanese capitalKhartoum on their joint five-day mission to try to re-energize the stalledpeace process in the war-torn region. Jan Eliasson and the AU's Salim Ahmed Salim are scheduled to hold meetingsin Khartoum -- and then later in Darfur itself -- with both signatoriesand non-signatories to last year's Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), accordingto a joint statement released today. During their talks Mr. Eliasson andDr. Salim will stress the urgent need for an end to the political andhumanitarian crisis engulfing Darfur, where at least 200,000 people havebeen killed and 2 million others displaced from their homes since 2003. The envoys "will be delivering a strong message," their statement said,including on the need for a cessation of hostilities so that humanitarianoperations can take place and the suffering of civilians can bealleviated. An estimated 4 million people across the vast and impoverishedregion now depend on aid for survival. Mr. Eliasson and Dr. Salim have repeatedly emphasized that a tangiblereduction in violence is vital to create the conditions necessary forserious and all-inclusive political dialogue to take place that includesboth signatories and non-signatories to the DPA. Many of the rebel groups that have fought Government forces and alliedmilitias in Darfur since 2003 did not sign the DPA last May, and fightinghas raged on since then, with widespread fears that the conflict couldspill over into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR). Last month Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the situation in Darfuras "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world." As the envoys are visiting Sudan, the Secretary-General's Acting SpecialRepresentative to the country, Tayé-Brook Zerihoun, is travellingto Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, to participate in the AU meeting onSudan and Chad. A separate UN Human Rights Council fact-finding team is also in theregion, travelling to Addis Ababa, Khartoum and Darfur to evaluate thesituation. The high-level mission has been tasked with assessing human rights inDarfur, which has witnessed countless instances of abuses, among them massrape, abduction and forced relocation since fighting began in 2003. Meanwhile, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) reported today that freshviolence in South Darfur since December has displaced at least 110,000people from the area around Deribat. In North Darfur, the Mission called for the resumption of humanitarianoperations around Tawila, which had been vacated by UN agencies and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) because of recent instability.