Sudan: Helicopters top list of "shameful" missing equipment

NAIROBI, 31 July 2008 (IRIN) - A year after the UN Security Council authorised the establishment of a 26,000-strong force for the troubled western Sudanese Darfur region, not a single one of the 18 transport helicopters required has been offered, effectively undermining the work of the peacekeepers, a report stated.

"Early this month peacekeepers were attacked in Darfur," Amjad Atallah, a spokesman for the Save Darfur Coalition said. "They were outmanned and outgunned. Because no country has provided helicopters for the UN force there was no back-up and seven peacekeepers paid with their lives.

"It is time the international community got serious about enabling peacekeepers to do their job of protecting civilians and handed over these helicopters."

The force, known as UNAMID, has so far deployed about 9,500 men, many formerly serving in the African Union force that was replaced by the Blue Berets. A possible extension of its mandate was discussed by the Security Council on 31 July.

The report, Grounded: the International Community's Betrayal of UNAMID, however, noted that questions of resources were much deeper than just lack of helicopters. Many other basic supplies, from boots to ration packs, had also yet to be provided.

"This report sets out for the first time which states have the necessary helicopters and estimates how many are available for deployment to Darfur," former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Lakhdar Brahimi, former president Jimmy Carter and Graça Machel said in a foreword. The report was endorsed by various organisations working on Darfur.

"It identifies a number of countries - including the Czech Republic, India, Italy, Romania, Spain and Ukraine - that have large numbers of helicopters that meet the required specifications and are not on mission or mission rotation elsewhere," the elders, who recently visited Darfur, added.

"Many of these helicopters are gathering dust in hangars or flying in air shows when they could be saving lives in Darfur."

The report comes after a coalition of more than 50 African and international human rights and civil society organisations urged world leaders to keep their promises and not condemn millions of Darfurians to more fear and suffering, without protection from violence.

In a 28 July report, Putting People First: The Protection Challenge Facing UNAMID in Darfur, the coalition said UNAMID was hamstrung by lack of equipment, training and uniformed personnel as well as its own shortcomings.

"The people of Darfur deserve more than empty words and broken promises," spokesman Dismas Nkunda said. "The international community needs to urgently bolster its support to the brave, mostly African peacekeepers. The truth is stark but simple; the international community's failure to act is costing lives."

UNAMID Joint Special Representative Rodolphe Adada concurred with the report in its major findings, but said the force was continuing to do everything it could to fulfil its tasks and provide as much protection possible for the people of Darfur, humanitarian workers and for its own personnel.

Force Commander Martin Luther Agwai too urged the international community to honour its responsibilities to the force. "We remain desperately under-manned and poorly equipped...our long shopping list of missing equipment makes for shameful reading," he wrote in an op-ed on 31 July.

Aid agencies estimate that 200,000 people have died since conflict erupted in Darfur in 2003, while 4.5 million have been directly affected, including over two million people forced to flee their homes.

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