U.S. and European media

May 8, 2023

Reuters: Violence in eastern Chad threatens refugee aid-U.N. Fighting in eastern Chad will make it difficult to get assistance to tens of thousands of refugees and displaced people, the United Nations said on Friday. Clashes between rebels and Chadian troops had taken place in the Koukou Angarana area that hosts 22,000 refugees from Darfur and 60,000 other displaced people, said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The UNHCR had moved 18 of its staff away from the conflict zone, with two staff remaining to ensure basic supplies and services continued, Redmond told a news briefing. "Reduced humanitarian activities can only be sustained for a short while and we are hoping to regain access to the Koukou area very soon," he said. Chad accused neighbouring Sudan earlier this week of sending armed groups into the east, close to their shared border, an accusation Khartoum has denied. Each has accused the other of supporting insurgent groups inside their territories.

Reuters: Sudan's Haroun, wanted by ICC, to head key region. Sudan has chosen Ahmed Haroun, wanted by the International Criminal Court on Darfur war crimes charges, as governor of a sensitive north-south border province that contains key oil fields, state media said on Friday. State news agency SUNA said President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had named Haroun to lead the province of South Kordofan, which includes the contested border town of Abyei, site of clashes between northern and southern armies last year. Scores of people were killed and more than 50,000 displaced last year when northern and southern armies clashed in Abyei. Both north Sudan and the country's semi-autonomous south claim the town. At stake is control over nearby oilfields and a pipeline funnelling crude to Sudan's Red Sea coast.

The Economist: Behind the defiance, a whirr of diplomacy. Two months after the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, for alleged war crimes in his country's battered western region of Darfur, he seems to be sitting pretty. But beneath the surface, things have been less simple, less predictable and less easy for Mr Bashir. Many expected his government to lash out at its enemies, real or imagined, even more fiercely. After its initial huff and puff, it has not done so. In truth, Sudan's rulers have been rattled by the indictment. As a result, they have been trying anew to ingratiate themselves with the West and with governments farther afield on a range of issues, all in the hope of persuading the UN Security Council to ask the ICC to suspend its indictment, which it has the power to do, for a year at a time. Despite the Sudanese government's defiant rhetoric and the expulsion of the aid agencies, it has quietly shifted on several points. It can change tack again, as it has before. But it is plainly not immovable.

Associated Press: Big Fund Firms Starting to Screen on Human Rights. The financial disclosures investors get in the mail from mutual fund companies don't normally capture Nancy Prindle's attention. Then again, the dry brochures rarely delve into anything as gripping as the bloodshed in Sudan's Darfur region -- a topic that has inspired action from Prindle, a Delaware, Ohio woman who counts a handful of Vanguard Group funds in her retirement nest egg. The 63-year-old educational consultant said she was ''horrified'' to recently learn that five Vanguard funds invest in a Chinese company exploring for oil in Sudan. So Prindle cast a yes vote on an activist-backed proxy ballot proposal on human rights that Vanguard mailed to millions of its investors, leading up to a July 2 special shareholder meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz. The Vanguard proxy campaign is led by Boston-based Investors Against Genocide. The nonprofit says the proxy measure is needed because, even though Vanguard has a screening policy, the company has continued investing in a company that's a lightning rod for activists.

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].