Ghost of Aid Agencies Past Returning to Darfur

by Michael Bear · 2009-06-16 17:43:00 UTC
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The Sudanese Government has graciously allowed the ghosts of aid agencies past to return to Darfur.

To re-cap - last week, the UN announced that four of the aid agencies expelled from Sudan in March would return.  Factually true, albeit semantically problematic, as Sudan had earlier vowed never to allow the expelled agencies back into the country.

The Sudanese Government immediately released a statement that said agencies were not, in fact, returning.

At which point the UN and the agencies themselves bent over backwards to agree, drawing somewhat Talmudic distinctions between, on the one hand, CARE USA and Mercy Corps (both expelled, never to return) and on the other CARE Switzerland and Mercy Corps Scotland (completely separate organizations soon to resume work in Sudan).

Having proven once again that it can make the UN and NGOs sing and dance, the Sudanese government then clarified that the "new" agencies were in fact welcome to register.

An article by Rob Crilly in the Christian Science Monitor quotes some aid worker reactions to the news:

"'This is exactly what we were worried about – that NGOs will now have to bend over backward to keep the government happy, putting out press releases like this that make no mention of the humanitarian emergency or the fact that they were expelled in the first place,' says one aid worker with experience of dealing with Khartoum officials. 'It's as if there are no red lines beyond which we won't be pushed.'

...

'It seems there is a big divide between [headquarters], which sees Darfur as a high-profile emergency and the sort of place it is important to work in, and people who worked there and suffered intimidation and bullying,' says an aid worker now based in Nairobi, Kenya. 'Khartoum now thinks it can do whatever it wants and get away with it. Who's to say we wouldn't spend millions of dollars building up our programs, only to be kicked out again in a few months?'"

La plus ca change.

[Camp in Darfur - Photo from Mercy Corps]

Michael Bear
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