UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe said that between six and ten
nongovernmental groups (NGOs), who conduct some of their rescue
operations in the western Darfur region, received notice just hours
after an arrest warrant was issued by the International Criminal Court
against President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Executive director for
development Liz McLaughlin spent the past four years as CARE’s
assistant country director in Sudan. She says the agency’s only
objective is to continue giving the 460-thousand beneficiaries of its
agriculture, health, education and life-saving projects access to the
help they so desperately need.
"We hope that the situation is reversed so that we can continue to
operate there because our main objective, of course, is to reach the
beneficiaries, and our concern, apart from our staff, is to make sure
our beneficiaries continue receiving help from CARE and other NGOs,"
she said.
CARE has operated in several regions of Sudan, Africa’s largest
country, for 28 years, for the past six years alone with a staff of 350
in Darfur and neighboring Chad. Altogether, 650 CARE employees fulfill
humanitarian needs of Sudanese who live in North and South Kordofan
states in the center of the country and in the capital, Khartoum, in
addition to Darfur and in eastern Chad where emergency relief is being
carried out. McLaughlin says that CARE is excercizing sound security
policies to protect its workers, most of whom are Sudanese civilians.
"We have excellent staff security measures in place, and like every
other NGO, it’s our prime concern to make sure staffers are all okay,
and today they are. We can say that all of our staff are safe. They
are following all our procedures," she noted.
But no final decision has yet been reached on what needs to be done,
whether to evacuate or bolster protective services in the hope that UN
or other outside mediation can convince the Bashir government to
rescind its expulsion order from northern Sudan. CARE’s Liz McLaughlin
says the country director’s office has the discretion to make the final
call, both in authorizing last-ditch efforts to change government
officials mind or enlist UN negotiators’ to weigh in with Khartoum, or
to abandon the country.
"They have full authority. Staff safety comes first, and they are on the ground," she points out.
McLaughlin describes her aid group’s relations with Khartoum as
"reasonably good," with CARE never having to abandon any aid programs
it had initiated throughout the country. She rejects reports of aid
agency involvement with political fight being waged against President
Bashir and says that CARE only speaks out on the humanitarian concerns
involving the civilian population. Sudanese officials have in the past
accused Darfur aid groups of giving evidence to the international
court’s special prosecutor to further the case against Bashir. The
NGOs deny the charge.
The UN and aid agencies oversee the world’s largest humanitarian
operation in Darfur for its 2.5 million people displaced by the
six-year conflict. Within minutes of Wednesday’s ruling by the ICC
that found Sudan’s 20-year leader guilty on two counts of war crimes
and five counts of crimes against humanity, Sudanese officials revoked
aid groups’ operating licenses, told them to list their assets, which
they designated as subject to seizure, and ordered them to leave
northern Sudan immediately. The action prompted UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-Moon to declare it a "serious setback," and he urged Khartoum to
restore full operating capacity to all NGOs.
In the lead-up to Wednesday’s indictment, Khartoum, as well as several
Arab nations and countries in the African Union warned that a warrant
against Bashir, which is expected to limit his international travel and
possibly curb Sudan’s participation in world and regional conferences
and activities, would do more to destabilize Sudan than the conflicts
that are already crippling the country. Liz McLaughlin says that in
the absence of NGOs, the UN may be the institution tasked with picking
up the pieces.
"We hope that there’s a plan in the country with UN and with the
government themselves, somehow, maybe to reverse these positions, or
they have a plan to continue the work, especially the work in Darfur,
working in the IDP camps (internally displaced persons) and delivering
food, ensuring health services continuing. We hope that the UN and the
government have a plan in place but we can only hope at this stage,"
McLaughlin maintained.
The ten NGOs ordered to leave include CARE, the British charity OXFAM,
MSF-Holland (Doctors without Borders), Mercy Corps, Save the Children,
the Norwegian Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee,
Action Contre la Faim, Solidarites, and CHF International.