U.S. and European media

March 23, 2023

BBC: Sudan 'extermination' as aid cut. The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court has accused Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir of "exterminating" refugees by expelling international aid agencies. Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that by blocking aid the president was attacking the civilians in the giant camps that dot Darfur. He called for President Bashir to be arrested as soon as he leaves Sudan. Speaking to the BBC's Network Africa, Mr Moreno-Ocampo said that by expelling the international aid agencies the president was "confirming that he is exterminating his people". Mr Moreno-Ocampo said that he would work for the arrest of President Bashir as soon as he leaves Sudan. [He] said that entering international airspace would be enough, since UN Security Council resolution 1583 urges all UN members to co-operate with the court.

Reuters: Sudan's Bashir in Eritrea despite ICC warrant. Sudan's president visited Eritrea on Monday on his first foreign visit since he was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur, Eritrea's government said. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir risks arrest when he leaves Sudan after The Hague-based court issued a warrant for him this month on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. "This looks like a symbolic act -- to show he can do it. It is not that significant in itself," said Fouad Hikmat, an analyst for the Nairobi-based International Crisis Group. "He is just crossing one of his country's own borders, visiting a neighbour who doesn't really have dealings with the international community," he said. "The real question is whether he will be able to cross international air space to visit Qatar."

New York Times: Aid Groups' Expulsion, Fears of More Misery. The sign outside the clinic in Otash camp reads "8-hour service daily." On Friday, Haider Ismael al-Amin lay in his mother's arms, his 10-year-old body withered and weak from dehydration after a night of vomiting. But the door to the clinic was locked. After 30 minutes of waiting, his family gave up. "The white people used to come every day," said Hawa Hamal Mohammed, a relative of the boy. "Now the clinic is closed." The American aid group that operated the clinic, the International Rescue Committee, was one of more than a dozen aid groups expelled from Darfur this month by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Since then, local health workers have been struggling, with almost no medicine, to keep the clinic open on a limited basis. Thousands of people in this sprawling camp depend on it for primary care. But on Friday it was closed altogether.

New York Times: U.N. Official Says Darfur Continues to Crumble. The humanitarian situation in Darfur continues to deteriorate in the wake of Sudan's decision to expel major foreign aid organizations from the country, a top United Nations official told the Security Council on Friday, with a majority of Council members sharply criticizing Khartoum for refusing to reverse its edict. Critical areas of concern in Darfur include distribution of adequate food, water and medical care, as well as the safety of United Nations personnel and humanitarian workers who have been subject to stepped-up attacks, said the official, Rashid Khalikov, the director in New York for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Western ambassadors uniformly criticized Sudan for its decision to expel 13 foreign aid organizations and close three local ones, which the country did after the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced more than two weeks ago that it was indicting President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on war crimes charges. Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, delivered one of the most barbed speeches, holding Mr. Bashir responsible for the fate of all the people in Darfur. "President Bashir created this crisis," she said. "He should rectify it immediately."

Washington Times: Students kick off Darfur shoe drive. Students at a Northern Virginia high school are trying to draw national attention to the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan - one step at a time. The students - mostly from the international relations class at Briar Woods High School in Ashburn, Va. - hope to collect 400,000 pairs of shoes, each representing a person killed in the violence in Darfur, in time to display them on the Mall on April 26. "A lot of times, change comes from the students," said Logan Williams, a 10th-grade teacher who started and runs the project. Miss Williams said the project has spawned nearly 100 shoe drives, collecting about 5,000 pairs of shoes from as far away as Texas, Hawaii and New Zealand. Miss Williams said the project has a federal permit. and the plan is to ring the Reflecting Pool with the shoes. "Our hope is that the image will be hard to ignore," the students' mission statement says.

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].