U.S. and European Media

August 28, 2023

Associated Press: U.N. OKs Troops Near Darfur. The Security Council gave the European Union and the U.N. the green light Monday to prepare for a military and police deployment to help protect civilians in Chad and the Central African Republic caught in the spillover of the Darfur conflict. A council statement expressed readiness to authorize an international operation for a year to protect refugees, internally displaced people and civilians at risk in eastern Chad and the northeastern Central African Republic, and to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. The EU would send troops and the United Nations would contribute police, though France and the U.S. have said the year-long deployment will likely be followed by a U.N. peacekeeping operation. An EU Council of Ministers meeting on Sept. 17 will make a final decision on deploying European Union troops. The council's statement sends an important ''message of concern for the seriousness of the humanitarian situation in Chad and the Central African Republic,'' said France's deputy U.N. Ambassador Jean-Pierre Lacroix. Darfur's spillover into the northeast Central African Republic and eastern Chad ''has had very serious humanitarian consequences -- more refugees, more displaced persons, and more insecurity for these refugees and displaced persons,'' he said. 

Reuters: British minister urges China to help on Darfur. China should help resolve a humanitarian crisis in Darfur as one of a few "critical players," a British minister said on Tuesday, urging the world's most populous country to be more active in global diplomacy. Lord Malloch-Brown, on the first visit to China by a British minister since Gordon Brown took up the premiership in June, said Beijing needed to transform itself into a "strong, multilateral player." "Trying to move on Darfur without the active involvement of China was kind of like pushing a very big rock up an extremely steep mountain, you just couldn't do it," Malloch-Brown, Britain's minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, told reporters. While Chinese companies control some of Sudan's largest oil blocks, human rights groups accuse China of giving Khartoum financial and military aid that enables it to wage war in the Darfur region that has killed an estimated 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million. Malloch-Brown plans to travel to Sudan in 10 days. "I think that I go to Sudan on a much more powerful position having talked first to the authorities in Beijing, they are critical players in all of this," he added. "The kind of world we want to see is one where human rights are respected universally, and an indispensable part to achieving that is that China is also willing to make that case at home and abroad."

Associated Press: Sudan Expels Head of CARE for Country. The head of CARE International's operations in Sudan was expelled Monday after a year of directing one of the biggest private aid efforts in the Darfur region, the organization said. Country director Paul Barker became the third prominent foreign official ordered out of Sudan since last week. ''We are deeply disappointed by the decision of the government of Sudan,'' CARE's chief executive officer, Helene Gayle, said in a telephone interview. Gayle said Sudan had ordered Barker to leave within 72 hours, without explaining why, and he was complying. Sudanese government officials did not return phone calls seeking comment. Barker ''has not said or done anything that would be inappropriate,'' she said. CARE has 600 people in Sudan, where it has spent $184 million on aid projects over 27 years, Gayle said. The organization has spent $60 million, mostly in Darfur, over the last three years, she said. Sudan expelled the top Canadian diplomat and the European Commission envoy last week for what was described as ''meddling in its affairs,'' without further explanation. The Sudanese government later said that the EU official, Kent Degerfelt, could serve out the remaining three weeks of his mandate as long as he was replaced by someone new.

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