March 29, 2024

Humanitarian expulsions: joint assessment

I just received a copy of the joint assessment report on the humanitarian impact of the Sudanese government’s decision to expel 13 aid agencies. The report has been signed off on by both the Commissioner of the Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator.

It is a somewhat surreal experience to read the executive summary of the report in that it decontextualizes the current situation entirely. It describes “the situation created by the departure of NGOs in Darfur” as if the NGOs had woken up one morning and decided to take a vacation, as opposed to having been expelled or – in the case of SUDO – disbanded, by the Sudanese government. Nevertheless, I imagine without this decontextualization, there would have been no assessment at all so, . . . gotta pick your battles I guess.

The section of the report on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) states: “Eight NGOs (ACF, CARE, CHF, IRC, Merycorps, Oxfam, Solidarities and SUDO) used to work in the WASH sector in 38 locations covering between 20% – 100% of the WASH needs in the locations where they worked.”  The report noted that “As of 19 March, no organization had addressed sanitation – in particular de-sludging of latrines and waste disposal.” Put this together with the report’s observation that the expelled agencies provided health and nutrition services to “over 840,000 people” and that “692,400 people who would normally have received shelter materials before the rainy season starts will not do so unless UNJLC (the UN’s Joint Logistics Centre) finds partners and they have access to previous distribution lists” – – –  looks to me like we have a public health emergency looming.

Regarding food, the report states that the WFP is carrying out an emergency “one-off” distribution that cannot be repeated.  By May, the report continues, “new and experienced partners” will be needed to carry out food distributions to over 1 million people in Darfur. [One imagines the bureaucratic discussion to come up with such an oxymoronic requirement went something like, HAC: We will only accept new partners; UN: We will only accept experienced partners = Agreed language: “new and experienced partners”]

Obviously the focus right now needs to be on filling the “gaps” the assessment identifies.  But we live in a world of finite resources. So as the necessary financial and diplomatic expenditures are invested in managing this crisis [a crisis created by a decision by the Sudanese government], they are simultaneously drawn away from resolving the big picture item – establishing conditions of peace and security in Darfur . . . Do we have here yet another example of the tactical brilliance of Khartoum’s leadership??

Comments

  1. Hijjabat says:

    The UN has rule of thumb for humanitarian operations to accept the hierarchy of the Security Council and the political decisions and imperatives as defined by New York.
    Examples are many where the humanitarian needs are not the priority.
    The UN at all levels will accept all sort of lies (no ethics applied here) just in order to keep the influence of the Security Council alive.

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