NewsTrust - Sudan - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Op-Ed Columnist: Dodging Bombers in Sudan

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Feb. 22 (Opinion) - In Sudan, people are living in caves and starving in the Nuba Mountains as their government indiscriminately bombs the region and bars food aid.

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Famine in Somalia is over, says UN

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - Feb. 03 - Exceptional harvest and food deliveries have improved conditions, but millions of people are still at risk An exceptional harvest after good rains and food deliveries by aid agencies have ended famine in Somalia, although conditions remain fragile and could worsen, the United Nations have said. The UN declared famine in two parts of southern Somalia last July and extended the famine warning in September to six out of eight regions in the country. The UN said initially 750,000 Somalis faced imminent starvation and lowered this to 250,000 by November. Six months after famine was declared, 4 million Somalis were in need of aid and the UN said the number now stood at 2.34m. "The gains are fragile and will be reversed without continued support," said Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia. "There are 1.7 million people in southern Somalia still in crisis. Millions of people still need food, clean water, shelter and other assistance to survive and the situation is expected ...

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Sudan split was 'over-simplified' by media

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Ali M Latifi - Jul. 10 (Opinion) - For many directly affected by the world's longest-running civil war, the Sudanese conflict has been over-simplified in the Western press as inter-religious or inter-ethnic strife. "The media tried to make us look like Jafar in Aladdin," says Khalid Albaih, a Sudanese political cartoonist. "Everyone looks alike [in Sudan], the Arabs and the Africans," he adds. John Prendergast, human rights activist and co-founder of the Enough project, told Al Jazeera: "One should not overplay this idea of north versus south or Christian versus Muslim." While Moez Ali, a Sudanese blogger and political commentator, said the conflict was an issue of disenfranchisement of a people "who were never given an agenda in the government" throughout the nation's 55-year history. Since independence in 1956, "a small group of people in power in Khartoum used race and religion to divide and conquer," says Prendergast. This conflict was further exacerbated in 2004 when the Khartoum government, headed by Omar al-Bashir, made a bid to control the oil and water resources of the south, he adds.

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South Sudan: Messy Divorce Or Amicable Split?

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AllAfrica - By Yohannes Woldemariam - May. 13 (Opinion) - The history of Sudan is a complex one which can't be reduced to a linear narrative of south versus north,' writes Yohannes Woldemariam. Can South Sudan resolve the sticking points standing in the way of successful secession?

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Is Mexico at war? Conflict prompts linguistic debate

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

McClatchy - Feb. 04 - MEXICO CITY — Over a 48-hour period this week, gangsters tossed grenades, torched buses, set up roadblocks and strafed police units in Mexico's second and third largest cities.

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In Sudan, Possible New Country Poses Health Care System Challenges

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:28:00 -0800

NewsHour - Jan. 03 - Listen to the Audio GWEN IFILL: Next tonight: the health care challenges that threaten to overwhelm an African nation as it prepares to cast a critical vote on independence.Special correspondent Jeffrey Kaye reports from Southern Sudan.JEFFREY KAYE: On the banks of the Nile River in South Sudan, entrepreneurs pump water to fill up tankers. Private water collection and sales from rivers and wells is big business here, particularly during the dry season. But, for customers, the water often comes at a high cost.DR. JUSTIN BRUNO, Al Sabah Hospital: It is a good business for them, but this is spreading diseases.JEFFREY KAYE: Dr. Justin Bruno directs the Al Sabah children hospital in the town of Juba.JUSTIN BRUNO: The water is not treated. It is just flowing naturally. And then it comes into the tanks and the tankers sell it to the people. And the people just drink them. It's not boiled. It's not treated.JEFFREY KAYE: And what happens as a result?JUSTIN BRUNO: Diarrheal diseases. People get acute diarrhea. People get what are bloody diarrhea and typhoid fever. And that is rampant in this town and in Southern Sudan.JEFFREY KAYE: And you can trace that right back to those tanks?JUSTIN BRUNO: Right back to the river water.JEFFREY KAYE: Patients suffer not only from preventable diseases, but, even if they make it to a health care facility, often from inadequate treatment.This is essentially the waiting room of the only children's hospital in South Sudan. The health care system, such as it is here, is barely functioning. Most people have no access to health care. So, the challenge is not so much to improve the system. It's to create one.JUSTIN BRUNO: The most pressing medical need is lack of medical supplies. The medical supplies is not enough for the patient.JEFFREY KAYE: What do you mean?JUSTIN BRUNO: The medications are not enough for the patients.JEFFREY KAYE: Besides the lack of drugs, the hospital's single X-ray machine is broken. It shares a storage room with a busted blood bank refrigerator. There's no ultrasound or C.T. machine. And even though there's an emergency ward, the hospital has no anesthesia.Inpatients here, most suffering from malaria, malnutrition, respiratory infections and diarrhea, often share beds or sleep on the floor.Mary Camisa (ph) walked here barefoot from her village 50 miles away, carrying her 3-year-old son suffering from convulsions brought on by cerebral malaria.JUSTIN BRUNO: They are very far distances to walk in. Some, they often drive two days to arrive here to get health care services here. So, we need to decentralize more these health centers, so that they're closer to the people.JEFFREY KAYE: South Sudan's dire health conditions are reflected in a recent United Nations compilation of what it calls ‘scary statistics.' Most people have no access to safe drinking water or sanitation. Malaria is hyperendemic. A 15-year-old girl is more likely to die in childbirth than finish school.Katie Morris is a program manager for Catholic Relief Services, which, among other projects, provides support for 43 health facilities in Southern Sudan.KATIE MORRIS, Program Manager, Catholic Relief Services: If you look at it by the numbers, it paints quite a grim picture. Maternal and infant mortality are among the highest in the world. Vaccination coverage is among the lowest for children and -- and pregnant women. It's a very sad picture.JEFFREY KAYE: Changing that picture will be among the biggest challenges facing an independent South Sudan if, as expected, people here vote to separate from the North in a referendum that begins January 9.Even now, South Sudanese officials are planning how to build a medical system, virtually from scratch. Member of parliament Dr. Martha Martin heads the legislature's health committee.DR. MARTHA MARTIN, Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly: So, we need to think about rural areas to be developed. Develop them through the primary health care.JEFFREY KAYE: A family doctor trained in Cuba, Martin says family health centers can be used as building blocks of a national system.MARTHA MARTIN: If have primary health care, you won't have difficulties when you have somebody. You receive first the patient in the center. You give them the first aid and then you send them to a big hospital. The patient will be saved.JEFFREY KAYE: So the first thing to do is develop a primary health care system?MARTHA MARTIN: We have to have a good, big hospital, well-equipped.JEFFREY KAYE: It's an ambitious undertaking. Clinics like this one, the Saint Kizito primary health care center in the town of Juba, are scattered throughout the country. But less than 30 percent of South Sudan's population has access to health care services. And, like the hospitals, many clinics also lack resources. When we arrived at the health center, women were waiting to have their children vaccinated. The mud floor clinic has no running water, no toilets, no delivery routes, no doctor. Medications were running low, and the staff of 10 shared two stethoscopes.This clinic is funded by the Catholic Church. Outsiders, including the U.S. government, the U.N., evangelical groups, and aid organizations, pay for most of South Sudan's health care.KATIE MORRIS: Over 60 percent of the health facilities in Southern Sudan are supported financially and in some cases operationally by international or national non-governmental organizations. So, the idea is that, over time, the government capacity will grow and that they will be able to absorb some of these facilities and take staff on to their payroll.JEFFREY KAYE: What few services the government currently provides are inefficient. After several hours at the Saint Kizito clinic, many women had given up waiting for vaccinations. The serum hadn't come, so patients had drifted away.Some clinics are trying to reduce maternal and child mortality rates by sending community health workers into villages. In the shanty neighborhood of Lologo on the outskirts of Juba, midwives from a U.S.-funded clinic visit huts to provide women with pre- and post-natal instructions and care. One in seven pregnant women in South Sudan is likely to die as a result of the pregnancy. Fourteen percent of children die before their fifth birthday.Midwife Rajibia Ahmad says simple lessons can save lives.RAJIBIA AHMAD, Midwife, Lologo Clinic: I will come here to see the baby, to see the mother, to check them, and to give her -- answer the question again, give them hygiene, how to eat, how to birth the baby.JEFFREY KAYE: Breast-feed.RAJIBIA AHMAD: Yes, breast-feeding.JEFFREY KAYE: Ahmad had delivered baby Emanuel (ph) seven days earlier. That's a rare occurrence in South Sudan, where only 10 percent of births are attended by a health care worker. The midwives urge pregnant women to deliver their babies in the clinic, to use clean water, and to avoid putting ashes on severed umbilical cords, a traditional treatment.Officials say they are optimistic about building a health care system in South Sudan. South Sudanese professionals who trained abroad during decades of civil war are returning to the country to practice medicine, among them, Dr. Bruno, who attended medical school in neighboring Uganda, where, as a teenager, he had fled by foot, a yearlong trek from his home. Bruno believes that independence might lead to less spending on the military and more on health.JUSTIN BRUNO: At the moment, more than 50 percent of our resources, of our budget go for security.JEFFREY KAYE: To the military?JUSTIN BRUNO: For the military.If independence comes, the reverse will be true. There will be less spending in the army and then there will be more spending in health care system and other service delivery. So, independence will mean a lot of development coming in, a lot of health care system improving, because the fact the money that go for security will have been put in development, the special health care system.JEFFREY KAYE: How much South Sudan spends on its military is likely to depend in part on whether the independence vote and its aftermath will be peaceful. In any event, economic development should go a long way to help reverse the abysmal health statistics by spurring the creation of water and sanitation systems. South Sudan's interim constitution guarantees free primary health care to all, clearly a long-term goal.For now, officials and health workers are combating preventable diseases with more basic steps: education, better nutrition, and simple drugs.

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The Immigrant Experience Gone Wrong

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Jennie Yabroff - Oct. 14 - Yosef Woldemariam came to America from Ethiopia by way of Sudan, first walking through war-ravaged villages to a port town, then stowing away on a ship in a packing crate.

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Another Item for Climate Panel's To-Do List

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Andrew C. Revkin - Sep. 03 (Opinion) - The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would do well to cultivate contacts between its authors and reporters in poor countries.

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U.S. athletes show backbone on Darfur

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Randy Harvey - Aug. 07 (Opinion) - Team captains Wednesday elected Lopez Lomong to carry their U.S. flag in the opening ceremony. Prevented by IOC rules to openly protest China's support of Darfur, the athletes did the next best thing. They chose a Sudanese refugee, who made the U..S. track team in the 1,500 meters, to play a central role before an estimated billion television viewers worldwide.

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My New Olympic Dream

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Joey Cheek - Aug. 06 (Opinion) - I'm not competing this summer, but I am urging others to think about Darfur and about China's relationship with Sudan. China buys much of Sudan's annual oil output and sells arms to Sudan, helping prop up the government in Khartoum. China is also the genocidal regime's key defender at the United Nations

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Refugees: Not the answer

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - Jul. 21 (Editorial) - Imagine you're a Palestinian refugee, living in a miserable camp on the border between Syria and Iraq. To say that life is hard would be an understatement, so when you hear that you're among those being transferred somewhere, you may, for a moment, dream of a stable life in a permanent home. But, if things go as the United Nations Refugee Agency and the Palestinian Liberation Organization have planned, that's all you'd have -- a dream. The UNHCR and the PLO have decided to move about 3,000 Palestinian refugees to Khartoum, Sudan.

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Why Beijing is standing by its basket-case friends

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Richard Spencer - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - ... China opposes attempts to bring Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir to justice over his government's crimes in Darfur; nor that its United Nations ambassador is happy to block, block and block again any motion that might hold President Robert Mugabe to account for Zimbabwe's election fiasco.

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Indictment for genocide

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - Jul. 15 (Editorial) - WHEN THE chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court presented evidence yesterday in support of an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, he touched off a clash between two principles. The bedrock of the ICC is the pursuit of justice for genocide and crimes against humanity. That differs from the mission of the peacekeeper, the humanitarian aid worker, and the peace negotiator, who must often overlook past crimes in order to end wars and save lives in the future.

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With Beijing's support, Bashir continues genocide

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Times - By Nat Hentoff - Feb. 04 (Opinion) - To further show his dancing contempt of the United Nations and President Bush, the first world leader to call the mass murders and rapes in Darfur "genocide," Gen. Bashir on Jan. 16 appointed as a special advisor Musa Hilal -- the chief leader and planner of Gen. Bashir's monstrous militia, the Janjaweed. As Human Rights Watch reports: "Scores of victims, witnesses to attacks and even members of the Sudanese armed forces have named Mr. Hilal as the top commander of government-backed Janjaweed militias responsible for numerous atrocities in Darfur." Moreover, Mr. Hilal, also involved with training camps for those rapists and killers, was specifically named, adds Human Rights Watch, "in a government document... ordering all Sudanese 'security units to allow the activities' of the components of the Janjaweed 'under the command of Sheikh Musa Hilal.' " Blithely countering criticism of his appointment of someone who Human Rights Watch rightly calls "the poster child" of the burning of Black African villages in Darfur, including the tossing of babies into the flames, Gen. Bashir, during an official visit to Turkey, actually celebrated Mr. Hilal: "Having contributed greatly to stability and security in the region, we in Sudan believe that those accusations against Mr. Hilal are untrue"

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A Bad Day for Human Rights

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:25:05 -0800

Weekly Standard - By Joseph Loconte - Dec. 11 (Opinion) - YESTERDAY WAS INTERNATIONAL Human Rights Day, the date marking the adoption by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948. Not even the most devoted U.N. apologists, however, could be in a festive mood. Even by their own Orwellian standards--in which the world's dictatorships sit in judgment of the world's democracies--it has not been a banner year for the cause of human rights.

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Darfur, Saving Itself

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 07:42:37 -0700

Washington Post - By Julie Flint - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - Kaltouma Musa walked home a few weeks ago carrying her baby on her back and holding her young brother tightly by the hand. She had left a camp for the displaced where she had been receiving aid to return to a rebel-controlled area with no aid, marked on maps as a no-go zone where the African Union and United Nations fear to tread.

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The 'feel-good' factor of Darfur

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 09:28:18 -0700

The China Post - By John J. Metzler - Jun. 02 (Editorial) - George W. Bush, Ban Ki-moon, and a host of world leaders nearly all agree on one thing; a focused and ongoing disgust over what the Sudanese regime in doing to its own people in the Darfur region. Yet the timing and the methods of stopping the bloodshed in Darfur has become hostage to dithering diplomatic deliberations that promise to drone on while innocents die. So when President Bush again stepped to the fore calling for a tightening of economic sanctions on Sudan for its actions in Darfur, not all of the "international community" including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was on the same script.

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Darfur dilemma puts Bush at a loss

Thu, 31 May 2007 23:44:50 -0700

Boston Herald - By Dale McFeatters - May. 31 (Opinion) - President Bush's early morning appearance in the Diplomatic Room of the White House to announce new economic sanctions on Sudan underscored just how few tools he has at his disposal to stop that four-year war. Bush and much of Western Europe and Africa say that the Sudanese government's actions in its Darfur region - the bombing of villages, the murder of civilians - is no less than genocide and that it must be stopped. "I promise this to the people of Darfur: The United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world," Bush said.

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Genocide diplomacy in Darfur

Wed, 30 May 2007 00:24:28 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - May. 30 (Editorial) - President Bush ratcheted up US sanctions Tuesday against Sudan for its atrocities in Darfur or, specifically, for not allowing in UN peacekeepers. His action, done on behalf of "the conscience of the world," just might force China, Sudan's main supporter, to find more of a conscience in helping end a genocide. In April, when Mr. Bush was ready to impose these tougher sanctions, China, along with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, sought additional time for diplomacy. Bush agreed, reluctantly. More attempts were then made to persuade Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, to approve a 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping force for Darfur. Such persuasion, without teeth, didn't work.

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Interview with John Pendergast

Wed, 30 May 2007 14:09:05 -0700

NPR - By Michel Martin - May. 30 (Interview) - John Prendergast, a former Clinton administration official and co-author of Not On Our Watch: The Mission To End Genocide In Darfur And Beyond, said he is unimpressed with the new sanctions. The Africa policy expert also is senior adviser to the International Crisis Group. Citing Americans' growing interest in the region, Prendergast faults the Bush Administration for announcing measures that he describes as more politically driven than substantially effective. He argues that the latest sanctions are not strong enough and are misguided, and that the crisis in Darfur has yet to become a top priority.

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Q&A: Sudan's Darfur conflict

Tue, 29 May 2007 13:54:39 -0700

BBC News - May. 29 (Review) - The African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Darfur is struggling to halt widespread abuses and violence, but Sudan is rejecting plans for it to hand over to a larger, stronger UN mission, prompting the US to extend sanctions. More than two million people are living in camps after fleeing almost four years of fighting in the region and they would be even more vulnerable without any peacekeepers.

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PanAfrica: AU, UN, Must Make Sudan Stop the Darfur Slaughter

Sun, 21 May 2006 03:14:20 -0700

AllAfrica - May. 21 (Editorial) - Both the African Union and the United Nations appear keen to force the hands of the rebels in Darfur to put their signatures to a peace deal that will enable, among other things, humanitarian agencies take food and relief to the starved, emaciated, fearful and long-suffering people of western Sudan.

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