Obstructions of humanitarian relief must consistently be treated as war crimes

On occasion of the World Humanitarian Summit, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) demands that deliberate obstructions of humanitarian relief should be internationally condemned and consistently be treated as war crimes. “Often, states such as Sudan systematically intimidate international aid workers. They send aid agencies out of the country arbitrarily or deny them access to the suffering civilian population. Although actions like this can put tens of thousands of lives at risk, these severe violations of international humanitarian law are usually not prosecuted,” said Ulrich Delius, the STP’s Africa-expert, in Göttingen on Tuesday. “We are talking about war crimes according to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Often, aid agencies remain silent about these problems – for fear that they might have to deal with reprisals or an expulsion of their employees.”

Last weekend, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry had refused to renew the working permit for Ivo Freijsen, UN Humanitarian Coordinator (OCHA), for another year. After working in the country since February 2014, Freijsen will have to leave at the latest on June 6, 2016. The Ministry gave no official reasons for the decision. Unofficially, however, authority representatives criticized that the UN coordinator had repeatedly complained about limited access to the people in need and about subjective and false reports about the humanitarian situation. Freijsen is the fourth high-level representative of the United Nations to be de-facto expelled by the Sudanese authorities during the last two years. 

In Sudan, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are systematically kept from doing humanitarian work. In December 2015, for example, the authorities in Darfur closed down the offices of the British NGO Tearfund, which had been working in the region for many years. Also, three aid workers were expelled in the last few months.

Aid agencies are complaining that the authorities have been obstructing supplies for the civilian population in Central and Northern Darfur for months by hardly issuing any permits for humanitarian work. Thus, aid workers often have difficulties to access the embattled Jebel Marra massif, where the authorities have also been keeping the International Organization for Migration (IOM) from registering war refugees since February 2016.

According to the UN, 5.8 million people in Sudan are dependent on international humanitarian assistance. “It is absurd and scandalous that the government agencies are keeping aid workers from doing their job. After all, it would be their duty to provide supplies for the people,” said Delius.

Header Photo: UN Photo/Tim McKulka