By Paul Lewis
Private aid groups, currently sending millions of dollars worth of food and medicine to relieve starvation and suffering in Sudan, are pressing the United Nations to make a vigorous new effort to end the nearly 30-year civil war there instead of merely feeding its victims.
This week, top officials from Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, CARE International and Doctors Without Borders pressed their case for a new United Nations peace effort at a meeting with the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council. The encounter was only the second time the panel had agreed to meet with private aid organizations.
"What we are saying is that this is unacceptable," David R. W. Bryer, Director of Oxfam United Kingdom and Ireland, said in an interview. "The war has been going on since the 1960's. Political action is needed and that is why we are here."
Afterward, several agencies said they believed that the Security Council, which has shown little interest in the Sudanese crisis in the past, would now become more active. "We have a commitment the Security Council will take up Sudan," said Guy Tousignant, Secretary General of CARE International. Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America, said, "We all feel very strongly that the Council is now ready to move on Sudan."
On Tuesday, the day after the meeting, the United Nations announced that Kieran Prendergast, Under Secretary General for Political Affairs, will visit Sudan and other countries in the region next month in an effort to revive peace efforts. Still, diplomats were cautious. "There were no conclusions," Sweden's Deputy Permanent Representative, Per Norstrom, chair of the meeting. "It's more that perhaps some seeds were sown."
Oxfam's representatives also with Secretary General Kofi An And the aid groups spent much of the week lobbying other senior United Nations officials as well as the representatives of the countries scheduled to join the Security Council year as rotating members. In their presentation to the Security Council the four aid groups that Operation Lifeline Sudan, the ambitious relief effort they and more than 30 other similar groups started more than a decade ago, has now been reduced to an expensive airlift because continued fighting has cut the road, rail and river supply routes they originally planned to use.
These groups now want the United Nations to persuade the Sudanese Government and the rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army to extend a temporary cease-fire agreed to in the province of Bahr el-Ghazal to all of southern Sudan and maintain it throughout next year. Unless that happens, they warn that both sides may just withdraw their forces from the province and step up fighting in other parts of the country.
But they are not hopeful, warning that the Government and the rebels have "settled into a brutal routine of accepting limited cease-fires which 'buy time' for both sides." Peace efforts organized by a regional organization called the Inter-Government Authority on Development "achieve little for the fundamental reason that both the Government and the S.P.L.A act as though their interests are better served by war than peace."
But none of the organizations are willing to suspend relief operations, although critics have argued that that outside aid may be helping to prolong' the war. "This is not an option; far too many people would die," said Mr Tousignant of CARE International.
