U.S. and European media

July 30, 2023

AFP: UN votes to keep UN-AU force in Darfur. The UN Security Council on Thursday voted unanimously to keep the joint UN-African Union force (UNAMID) in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region for another year to ensure the protection of civilians. It adopted a British-drafted resolution that decides "to extend the mandate of UNAMID ...for a further 12 months to July 31 2010" and directed the force to make full use of its capabilities to protect civilians in Darfur and ensure "safe, timely and unhindered humanitarian access."

Independent Online: UN mission in Darfur needs global aid. Twenty-two non-governmental organisations, including the Save Darfur coalition, on Wednesday appealed for world support for the struggling UN-African Union mission in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region. The force known as UNAMID "has failed at many critical junctures due to lagging support from the international community and continued obstruction by the Sudanese government," the NGOs said in a joint statement offering recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the force created two years ago. "There is too much at stake to ignore the challenges that UNAMID faces," said Jerry Fowler, president of Save Darfur, an alliance of more than 180 faith-based, advocacy and human rights groups campaigning for action to end alleged atrocities in Darfur.

AFP: Sudan must do more on Darfur aid: Rice. Sudan must do more to allow humanitarian workers into Darfur and step up cooperation with the joint UN-African Union Mission in Darfur, the US ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday. "We continue to urge Khartoum to fill the gaps in critical humanitarian aid and to improve its cooperation with UNAMID," Susan Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

AFP: Aid agencies, Darfur rebels hold security talks. Representatives of one of the main rebel groups in Sudan's Darfur region have met relief agencies about securing and improving aid deliveries in the conflict-torn region, mediators said Thursday. The meeting in Geneva on Wednesday and Thursday with several representatives of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) marked the resumption of a series of talks between the agencies and the main actors in Darfur that began last year. "Agencies are having difficulty in getting safe access to many thousands of people in Darfur," said Dennis McNamara, senior adviser at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva. "And the opposition movements want increased aid to their isolated populations."

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Backs Implementing U.N. Doctrine Against Genocide. The Obama administration is supporting moves to implement a U.N. doctrine calling for collective military action to halt genocide. The next step is to see if the countries in favor of implementing the policy will act when a new genocide is brewing if all other diplomatic actions fail. The doctrine is political, not legal: Although these countries have expressed the political will to act, they aren't legally bound to. The U.N. just concluded a weeklong debate on implementing the doctrine, which was endorsed by U.N. members in 2005.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].