Humanitarian situation in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region worsens - UN

Thursday 20 September 2007.

September 19, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia) — The United Nations said Wednesday that the situation in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region has "deteriorated rapidly," and called for an independent investigation into the humanitarian issues there.

The U.N. sent a fact-finding mission to the Ogaden in the country’s volatile east from Aug. 30 to Sept. 6.

"The mission observed the recent fighting has led to a worsening humanitarian situation, in which the price of food has nearly doubled," the U.N. said in a statement released late Wednesday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

The mission also called for a substantial increase in emergency food aid to the impoverished region where rebels have been fighting for increased autonomy for more than a decade.

The U.N. mission was sent after months of fighting that followed a crackdown ordered by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The government says the rebels, who killed 74 members of a Chinese-run oil exploration team, are terrorists, funded by its archenemy Eritrea.

The rebels have accused the Ethiopian government of genocide - a charge the government denies. In a statement on Sept. 13, the front said the government was punishing civilians for the rebel activities and that the fact-finding mission had not visited areas where war crimes were being committed.

"The Ethiopian regime’s policy in Ogaden continues to be a campaign of state-sponsored terror that largely avoids engagements with ONLF forces and instead focuses on collectively punishing our civilian population," the statement said. "Victims of the regime’s war crimes include victims of rape, torture, gunshot wounds and those fleeing burnt villages," it said.

The front called on the international community to stop "yet another preventable African genocide," and urged the U.N. to investigate further in the region, saying the recent trip had been too tightly controlled by the government.

Bereket Simon, the special adviser to the prime minister, dismissed the rebels’ claims after the statement was issued last week.

"They said it is good that the U.N. has sent the fact-finding mission. And now when the facts from the ground are found to be not supporting their claims, they are fighting the fact-finding mission," he said.

The group is fighting for greater political rights for the region, which is ethnically Somali.

(AP)

Rights violations are contining with impunity in Darfur - UN

Tuesday 18 September 2007.

September 17, 2007 (GENEVA) — The United Nations top human rights official warned on Monday that rights violations are contining in Darfur and that the Sudanese government has yet to make serious progress on tackling impunity for offenders.

Louise Arbour

"Darfur continues to be a matter of serious preoccupation," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour told journalists.

"Human rights violations continue to be of the same nature and largely on the same scale," she said.

People forced into camps after fleeing their homes continue to be targeted, with women in particular vulnerable to sexual attacks, she said.

Arbour warned that there was "very little progress on national efforts to combat the culture of impunity."

"There is very little indication of a change of attitude for the better on the part of the government of Sudan to respond to the warrants issued by the International Criminal Court," she added.

In May, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Ahmed Haroun, the secretary of state for humanitarian affairs, and pro-government Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kosheib, but Sudan has refused to hand them over.

However, Arbour did say that the "slightly more energised peace process" and the prospect of a joint UN-African Union "hybrid" peacekeeping force give some hope of new momentum towards a peaceful settlement.

"These two initiatives certainly give cause for some optimism that the human rights situation could improve," she said.

Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir met with Italian prime minister Romano Prodi last week and reportedly promised "total cooperation" with a hybrid peacekeeping force.

According to UN estimates, more than 200,000 people have died and some two million have been displaced in Darfur as a result of the combined effect of war and famine since the conflict erupted more than four years ago.

Khartoum disputes the figures and says only 9,000 people died.

(AFP)