Sudan Bans All Relief to the South
Relief Block is "Recipe for Famine"

(New York, September 28, 2002) - Sudan must revoke a relief flight ban
announced on September 26 to prevent a humanitarian crisis from becoming
a famine, Human Rights Watch said today. The ban covers all relief
flights and vehicles into southern Sudan from the main relief bases in
Kenya and Uganda.

"Barring relief access to more than one million civilians in southern
Sudan will surely bring on a catastrophe," said Jemera Rone, Sudan
researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Coming at the same time that the
government is stepping up its bombing of civilian areas in southern
Sudan, the relief ban heaps one abuse on another."

The duration of the ban is not clear; one report says it is to last from
September 27 until October 6, 2002, others say it is indefinite. The
flight and vehicle ban has been placed on Eastern and Western Equatoria,
the regions bordering Kenya and Uganda. There is no way to reach the
rest of the war-affected areas of southern Sudan from there without
flying hundreds of kilometers out of the way-which most relief planes
cannot do because they lack the fuel storage capacity.

The government ban on relief flights comes during a period when
increased abuses are reported in the civil war in southern Sudan between
Sudanese government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation
Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

Aid agencies in southern Sudan have reported that, in September 2002
alone, there has been government bombing affecting civilians in Mundri
(11 killed, 10 wounded in a displaced persons camp) and Yei in Western
Equatoria; Torit and Kapoeta in Eastern Equatoria; Wunrok (13-year-old
boy killed, seven wounded) in Bahr El Ghazal; Atar (nine killed) in
Upper Nile; Gar, Kawer and Tanger (Western Upper Nile); Lualdit,
Kanawer, Ajajer, Padak and Matiang (three killed) and Lui (13 killed in
a cattle camp, including four children), in Jonglei; Ganga in Abyei
county (family of six killed). This list does not include all bombing
incidents in the war in September, but clearly represents an escalation
of aerial bombing.

There have been reports that in September the SPLA attacked villages
south of Mayom (three killed) and used a landmine in Thar Jath (four or
five killed) in Western Upper Nile, and that the SPLA shelled the town
and summarily executed an unknown number of captured soldiers in Torit,
Eastern Equatoria.

These abuses have taken place despite the agreement in March 2002
between Sudanese government and the SPLM/A (fostered by U.S. Special
Envoy for Peace in Sudan former Senator John Danforth) in which each
undertook not to target civilians or civilian objects in the war. In
accordance with these agreements, the U.S. government has put in place a
Civilian Protection Monitoring Team, based in Khartoum and the southern
rebel-held town of Rumbek. The team is charged with investigating
military attacks by both sides targeting civilians and other violations
of the Geneva Conventions. Both the Sudanese government and the SPLA
agreed to permit this team to travel freely in southern Sudan.

"Now is the time for the Civilian Protection Monitoring Team to
investigate the continuing abuses by both sides as they wage this war in
areas susceptible to famine," said Rone. "At a minimum they should
investigate the reports the staff on the ground have made that civilians
were killed or injured in the fighting in September 2002, and the
reported abuses by the SPLA in Torit in August-September 2002."

The government of Sudan walked out of peace talks with the rebels on
September 2 in Machakos, Kenya, in protest of the SPLA's capture of
Torit-although at the time there was no ceasefire agreement and the
government was attacking and capturing SPLA locations as well. The
government has vowed to retake Torit.

"The relief flight ban means that there will be no relief agencies in
the south to witness and report on bombings and other attacks while the
government is pursuing its offensive," Rone said.

The United Nations and other agencies based in northern Kenya have some
600 relief personnel in southern Sudan on any one day, and conduct about
20 flights a day into the area. Evacuation of all staff members alone
would pose enormous logistical problems under this ban.

The Sudanese government also continues to pursue its military campaign
in the southern oilfields of Western Upper Nile, which has displaced
hundreds of thousands of civilians since 1999. The food security
situation in Western Upper Nile is "precarious," because of these
increasing government attacks on rebels and presumed civilian supporters
in the oilfields. The Famine Early Warning System Networks (FEWS Net)
estimates that thousands of people displaced by this fighting in 2002
have put recent pressure on host communities in neighboring Bahr El
Ghazal and Jonglei areas, the hosts themselves will need assistance
because of low grain production, caused by sporadic rainfall.

"This was the recipe for the famine of 1998: massive displacement of
civilians by war into areas where food is projected to be scarce, plus a
sudden government ban on humanitarian access to the disaster areas,"
Rone said.

Human Rights Watch detailed the 1998 famine in a report authored by
Rone, Famine in Sudan, 1998: The Human Rights Causes (available at
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/sudan/)

For more information, please contact:

In Washington, Jemera Rone: +1-202-612-4328
+1-202-332-8455
In London, Steve Crawshaw: +44-20-7713-2766
In Brussels, Jean-Paul Marthoz: +322-732-2009

--
Jeff Scott
Africa Division
Human Rights Watch
Phone: +1-212-216-1834
Fax: +1-212-736-1300
http://www.hrw.org/africa/index.php
en français, http://www.hrw.org/french/africa/