Care in the Crossfire

Charity workers in Sudan face obstacles on many fronts

In early April, the Norwegian Refugee Council received an unusual eviction notice. Sudanese officials gave the Oslo

relief group 48 hours to halt its operations and evacuate its international staff members from the war-torn region of Darfur, where the organization had been managing a camp that shelters more than 100,000 people.

Jens Mjaugedal, who leads the group’s international operations, says the Sudanese government never officially said why his organization was forced to leave Kalma camp, in south Darfur, and suspend its other programs in the region. While international staff members had to bide their time in an office in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, or embarked on other assignments, they listened with frustration and sadness to stories of deteriorating conditions and rising insecurity inside the camp.

“It made a miserable situation for the displaced even more miserable,” says Mr. Mjaugedal.

Such are the challenges facing aid organizations in Darfur, where three years of fighting between government-backed militias and rebel groups have killed at least 200,000 people, forced another two million to flee their villages, and left an estimated three and a half million people — or half the region’s population — in need of food.

Rebels and Bandits

More than 80 nonprofit groups are working in the region, but their efforts have been hamstrung by security threats, a shortage of donations, and government hostility.

Even a peace agreement signed last month between the government and the largest rebel group has not helped: Infighting between rebel groups and banditry has increased since then, leaving aid workers unable to reach some 250,000 people who need assistance. And new problems continue to arise, including the spillover fighting in neighboring Chad and disease borne by the rainy season that began this month.

Money to respond has been hard to come by. Many relief organizations say government funds are drying up as the conflict continues, making private donations more crucial than ever. Charities say budget shortfalls have forced them to lay off staff members and limit or cut their programs.

A few weeks after the peace agreement was signed, Jan Egeland, the top U.N. official for humanitarian affairs, warned that conditions for aid workers had become so perilous that the entire effort risked collapse.

Chief among those perils has been dealing with the Sudanese government. Charities have faced lengthy waits for visas, hold-ups in getting supplies through customs, and the intimidation and detention of their workers. Last year, for example, two Doctors Without Borders staff members were arrested and charged with spreading false information after publishing a report about sexual violence in Darfur. The government later dropped the charges.

“They are waging a war of attrition against NGO’s,” says Sarah Martin, who works for the advocacy group Refugees International, in Washington, referring to Sudanese officials. “They throw up every roadblock they can think of in front of them and then make it very difficult for them to get their work done. It just wears people out.”

Complex Negotiations

The Norwegian Refugee Council was allowed back into Darfur at the beginning of this month, but only after considerable wrangling by Mr. Egeland of the United Nations and other high-level officials. Mr. Mjaugedal says that his group’s complicated relationship with the Sudanese government reflects the tensions inherent in providing aid in countries with internal strife, where beneficiaries of aid may be suffering at the hands of state authorities.

As the coordinator for Kalma camp, his organization is responsible for bringing complaints from civilians to the attention of the government, but he says those complaints rarely fall on sympathetic ears.

Some organizations have chosen not to work in Darfur because of the trials involved. Operation USA, in Culver City, Calif., says a lack of donations and the numerous roadblocks set up by the Sudan government have made it too difficult, at least for now, for the charity to send in supplies. In 2004 Operation USA sent several shiploads of goods to the region in partnership with Islamic Relief, in Burbank, Calif. But it took nearly three months to receive clearance and transport the items to beneficiaries.

Relief charities say they have had to be nimble in response to the Sudanese government’s pattern of easing restrictions and then clamping down again.

In 2004, after significant international pressure, the government opened up access for aid groups, but then backtracked, culminating in the announcement in February of a new law to regulate humanitarian aid. Then in May, after the peace agreement, the government announced it would again ease restrictions on aid groups.

This time, some organizations are hopeful. The Norwegian Refugee Council’s Mr. Mjaugedal says he believes that the decision to allow his organization back into Darfur could reflect a new approach by the Sudanese government. But other charities are waiting to see what happens in the coming months.

Leslie Lefkow, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, says there is reason to be skeptical. “The Sudanese government has a long history of making pledges and then breaking them,” she says, noting that the government has taken no steps to open up access elsewhere in the country.

Deteriorating Conditions

While the large-scale fighting between the government and rebel groups has subsided, infighting among rebel groups, as well as banditry and lawlessness, has increased in recent weeks and months, causing many groups to suspend or limit their programs in certain areas.

The International Medical Corps, in Santa Monica, Calif., temporarily halted a medical program in May in the West Darfur towns of Garsila and Zallingi — places where it had previously been safe to work — out of security concerns.

Even within camps, tensions have increased in recent weeks. Many of the camps’ inhabitants are unhappy with the peace agreement, which they say does little to protect them, and some protests against the accord have turned violent.

Attacks by bandits have also made it more difficult for aid groups to negotiate for access to people in need.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, for example, had been providing medical care to villagers north of the tiny town of Saleah for more than six months without any complications, taking pains to establish strong relationships with local officials and tribespeople. But on five separate occasions in recent months, its convoys were hijacked and its workers robbed.

When the organization’s employees tried to determine who was responsible for the hijackings so they could negotiate a better relationship, no one knew. The group was forced to temporarily suspend its work in the region.

“If we knew who was responsible, we could continue operating there,” says Marco Yuri Jimenez Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Geneva organization. “But every single time we had an incident we brought in the local authorities and our network of interlocutors, and every single time they were surprised an incident had taken place.”

Security, meanwhile, is an additional drain on some organizations’ budgets. CHF International, in Silver Spring, Md., spends 4 percent to 5 percent of its budget on expenses related to keeping its workers safe, compared with about 1 percent in most countries.

“Agencies are having to put as much time and attention on security as they are to their actual work,” says Matthew Emry, senior program officer with American Jewish World Service, a New York charity that is raising money for the crisis.

That situation is not likely to change any time soon. While the U.N. Security Council has approved a peacekeeping force for Darfur to take over from the beleaguered African Union troops currently charged with protecting Darfur’s civilians, the U.N. force is not expected to arrive until at least next year, pending approval from the Sudanese government.

Ethical Concerns

The complex tribal, ethnic, and economic divisions that have fueled the fighting in Darfur are also shaping how groups design and manage their aid programs.

Most groups rely heavily on Sudanese staff members, often hiring civilians in camps to help them distribute supplies and provide other assistance. But organizations say that they must be careful to hire people from a wide array of tribal groups to avoid fostering resentment.

“You have to be very careful that your ethnic composition is fair,” says Solomon Kebede, who directs the International Medical Corps’s programs in Sudan.

Seemingly simple aid efforts, like building a well, can also stir tensions if they are not planned carefully.

Leo Roozendaal, Sudan country director for CARE, says that charities need to exercise caution when they build facilities, because people from one ethnic group could prevent others from using the facilities if they are constructed in an area dominated by a single group.

“Nothing is a clean page,” he says. “You have to be very aware of what the pros and cons of your actions might be.”

CARE, in Atlanta, is trying to promote peace through its activities, sometimes bringing together local authorities and civilians to discuss and help shape a project. The process of reaching consensus among different groups, says Mr. Roozendaal, is important for its own sake. But while CARE has received some support from the Dutch government, funds for such projects — which require a degree of flexibility on the part of donors because the results are harder to predict — have been in short supply, he says.

‘A Lot of Resentment’

Nonprofit groups are also struggling to avoid introducing inequities in the help provided to people who have taken shelter in camps and that given to those who have stayed behind in their villages. Conditions in some camps are squalid and even prison-like, but most camps have a good supply of staff members to help care for the refugees. And while charities are trying to help those who have remained in their villages, they have sometimes been limited in their efforts by security concerns or a lack of funds.

“There is a lot of resentment of NGO’s,” says Dr. Kebede, of the International Medical Corps. “Donors aren’t doing this intentionally, but it is the people’s perception because those in camps have food, education, health care.”

And a new dilemma is beginning to present itself to aid workers: How long can — and should — they continue providing support to people in camps?

The government of Sudan has been pressing for people to return home, and foreign governments are also hopeful that the security situation can improve enough for civilians to go back to their villages soon.

But the conditions on the ground do not support that optimism, aid organizations say.

Many also worry that camp residents will not want to go home even when security does improve, because in many cases their villages have been burned to the ground and they have nothing to return to.

Some nonprofit officials are concerned that the desire of foreign governments to quickly resolve the crisis and move on will lead to even deeper cuts in aid next year, when more money will be needed.

In the meantime, the displaced civilians in Darfur and the charities that are helping them remain in limbo until a political resolution is cemented and security forces are able to maintain peace.

While charity leaders say they welcome a time when they can dismantle the camps, they remain focused on meeting basic needs.

John Chromy, senior vice president for external affairs at CHF International, says: “There is an old African saying: ‘When the elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled.’ These women and children are the grass.”