PRESS BRIEFING ON ASSISTANCE FOR SOUTHERN SUDAN

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING ON ASSISTANCE FOR SOUTHERN SUDAN

At a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon, Emergency Relief Coordinator and Under- Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sergio Vieira de Mello, made an urgent appeal to the international community for assistance for the people of southern Sudan.

He said the conflict in Sudan was one of the longest running in recent history. He had served in southern Sudan at the end of the first civil war, from 1973 to 1974 and all the work that was done then to return refugees to their homes and provide them with the means for a dignified and peaceful livelihood, had turned out to be in vain, as the war resumed soon thereafter and had been continuing ever since.

He said the situation in southern Sudan had deteriorated since February as a result of renewed hostilities and the effects of the drought that hit the country. As a result, around 800,000 civilians were in danger, and many had already died.

Under a ban by the Sudanese Government on all flights of the United Nations Operation Lifeline Sudan out of Lokichokio in northern Kenya, the situation was becoming "dramatic", Mr. de Mello said. Ten days ago, he sent the Assistant Emergency Relief Coordinator-designate, Ross Mountain, to Khartoum to continue discussions that had begun in February with the visit of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Robert van Schaik. Mr. Mountain had obtained permission for three additional Hercules C-130 aircraft and one additional Buffalo aircraft to operate in the region, making a total of five Hercules and three Buffalo aircraft operating there.

It was believed that those aircraft, together with truck convoys when that were possible, would provide sufficient supplies to meet the needs of the population there, he said. The granting of permission to fly the extra aircraft had been a most welcome development and a major concession on the part of the Sudanese Government. The Secretary-General had thanked Sudan's Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman Ismaiel, for that concession when they met in Nairobi.

Mr. de Mello said the aircraft had flown from Kenya into affected areas in southern Sudan, reaching 180 locations. It was a complex and expensive operation.

He said the United Nations had also requested that the Sudanese Government grant permission to access the Nuba Mountains, located in the southern part of Kordofan state. Some areas of the mountains were under rebel

control, and the United Nations had not had access to them for 10 years. The Organization was therefore extremely ill-informed about the situation there, which was likely to be as serious as in the rest of the south.

A number of representations requesting access to the Nuba Mountains had been made to the Sudanese Government over the past few months, he said. He cited in particular the mission by Mr. Mountain 10 days ago, and the discussions which the Secretary-General had with Sudanese authorities, both in Nairobi and in Khartoum, on his unscheduled refuelling stop. As a result, the Office of the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the Sudan had obtained permission from the Government for an urgent needs assessment mission to fly to rebel controlled areas in the Nuba Mountains. That mission would be undertaken on Wednesday, 20 May, or possibly even sooner.

Those events had been good news against the tragic background of the situation of the civilian population in the affected areas of southern Sudan, Mr. de Mello said. He gave credit to the Sudanese Government for its flexibility.

However, he wanted to repeat an urgent S-O-S, he said. "We need money now. We have planes, there are no obstacles, but we need money -- and a lot of money for this one because it is an expensive operation." He said $20.2 million was needed for the World Food Programme (WFP) and $4.5 million for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). In relative terms, those were negligible amounts of money to assist 800,000 people over a four-month period.

"It is now possible to assist these people and to save them, provided we are given the means", Mr. de Mello said. There had been many appeals, to which the response had been "increasingly disappointing". Of all the appeals launched this year for Sudan, Afghanistan, and Sierra Leone, only 20 per cent of the needs had so far been covered.

A correspondent asked how much money would be needed for the Nuba operation. No such calculation had been made yet, Mr. de Mello said. Should there be civilians in need in rebel- controlled areas in the Nuba Mountains, as was expected, and should it be possible to fly there to provide assistance, the cost would have to be calculated. Yet another supplement to the appeal for Sudan would have to be launched.

A correspondent said that two weeks ago, Carol Bellamy, the Executive Director of UNICEF, had told journalists she was concerned about an apparent "donor fatigue". Did Mr. de Mello sense that people around the world had become desensitized to disasters, especially in Africa? "Absolutely", he said. That was a problem faced by everyone in the humanitarian community. It was a new and worrying trend, and it was not limited to Africa.

"And let's face it, the amounts we're talking about are not that great when you imagine the degree of suffering that is ongoing in so many of these emergency situations", Mr. de Mello went on to say. He appealed to correspondents to bring the situation to the media forefront. Otherwise, there was no hope of overcoming that indifference. Noting contributions that had been made by Governments, Ted Turner, and other sources, he said that much more was still needed.

To what did he attribute the recent cooperation of the Sudanese Government, and what hope did that give him for a peaceful settlement of the long-running conflict in that country? a correspondent asked. Recommending that the correspondent put the first part of his question to the Sudanese Mission, Mr. de Mello said there was a new and welcome trend in Khartoum. The Sudanese Government seemed to be accepting that humanitarian assistance to victims of the conflict did not constitute an interference in its internal affairs.

Relief for the victims was an obligation of both sides in the conflict and of the international community as a whole, Mr. de Mello said. He hoped one of the motives was that the Government had accepted that the United Nations and the non-governmental organizations assisting it were not conducting any "funny business" in southern Sudan. They were simply helping the victims of the conflict until the two parties had the courage and the vision to bring that conflict to an end.

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