The United Nations office in Geneva (UNOG) bi-weekly press briefing has reported two major incidents recently happened in Darfur region. On 16 and 17 January, clashes between armed men of the Masalit and Arab communities around the Krinding camp for internally displaced people, in West Darfur, caused the deaths of 160 people and the injury of 215. On 18 January, 72 people were reportedly killed and 73 others were injured in South Darfur’s Gereida locality following an armed collision between men from the Rizeigat tribe and the Falata tribe. These events raised serious concerns about the imminent risk of further violence in Darfur, a province where decades-old tensions, exacerbated by the previous regime, continue to fester.
Despite The United Nations office in Geneva’s call on the Government of Sudan to promptly ensure the full implementation of its National Plan for the protection of civilians, the inter-communal clashes, which began in West Darfur, spread to South Darfur the following day and took the lives of 250 people – including three humanitarian workers – as well as displacing more than 100,000 as stated by the OHCHR.
Most of the newly displaced persons are women and children, who have been hosted in very remote locations that lack basic services or public infrastructure, where they have been sheltered under trees. Before the latest round of armed collisions, Chad was already hosting more than 360,000 (as stated by the UNOG) Sudanese refugees, causing the situation to be on the verge of collapse.
As a result, human rights are constantly violated in the Sudan region, due to the impossibility to end ethnic and territorial disputes between tribes. Besides, the tribes’ tendency to solve conflicts with violence is only contributing to the worst case scenario: one in which innocent people lose their lives because of the greed of others.
To know more, please read:
https://www.unhcr.org/news/briefing/2021/1/600a93a64/100000-displaced-resurgence-violence-sudans
Author: Benedetta Spizzichino; Editor: Eleonora Gonnelli
