By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 26 -- While on Darfur the UN continues to say it is unable to confirm its own report of attacks on six villages in East Jebel Marra, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos on Tuesday told Inner City Press she has “asked someone to go down to Sudan from here in Headquarters” to see how to improve UN reporting of malnutrition and other data. Video here, from Minute 9:38.
Back on September 15, Inner City Press first asked Ms. Amos about the UN's discontinuation of reporting global malnutrition data for Darfur. Ms. Amos said that the UN was trying to do “joint assessments” with Sudan's government.
But later, UNICEF's Sudan Representative Nils Kastberg said that the Sudanese government has been blocking collection and release of such information. Inner City Press raised this on October 21 to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier de Schutter, who said he would look into it as a violation if he receives a formal complaint (which he now has.)
On October 26, Inner City Press asked Ms. Amos the question again, and she said “I have discussed [it] with the team... there is an issue of capacity.” Someone - it is not clear who - has been dispatched from New York to Sudan to see how to improve the reporting.
Depending on what is done, the UN could end its own violations of the right to food -- but the Sudanese government, it seems ever more clear, has been in violation.
Inner City Press also asked Ms. Amos about the statement, in the OCHA Darfur Weekly handed to the Press by the UN's Humanitarian Coordinators for Sudan Georg Charpentier about “intense ground fighting and aerial attacks in Eastern Jebel Marra over the past week, with several villages heavily affected, including Sora [Soro], which was completely burned down.”
Ms. Amos responded by reading out a weeks old statement handed to her by the spokesman UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Martin Nesirky, saying that the information -- in an OCHA report -- is “sketchy” due to lack of access.
Since UN Humanitarian Coordinator Charpentier has recently praised the Sudanese government for allowing access to Jebel Marra. So which is it?
“Sudan is a large country,” Ms. Amos said, noting that the government could provide access in some places and not others. But why then Charpentier's fulsome praise? Ms. Amos said the UN will now do everything it can to confirm. We'll see - watch this site.
