Press conference by the ERC Khartoum, Sudan - 02 Dec 2007

Transcript

RC/HC Spokesperson Orla Clinton: Welcome ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay. The ERC will give you a brief summary of the visit and then will take some questions.

1. Briefing by the ERC, John Holmes

Thank you very much Orla and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the press conference. I apologize to you for being slightly delayed. Let me start by saying how grateful I am to the government of Sudan for cooperation in arranging for this visit, for the meetings I had here in Khartoum and also the visits to the South and North Darfur.

I will not go in detail through the visit programme in detail but I had meetings with various ministers here in Khartoum, in South Darfur I went to Nyala and then from there for Al-Dain and the IDP camp called Al-Neim where I was able to meet some IDPs both individually and collectively including, for example, some women who had received funds from a common humanitarian fund which is run locally here for a nutrition programme was also able to meet the UN teams and the NGOs team, both international and national in South Darfur and to exchange views and get some impressions on what is happening on the ground down there is South Darfur.

I also paid a brief visit to Al-Fasher in North Darfur and partly talking to UNAMIDs and its commander general Agway that gave me a chance for a meeting of North Darfur and I also had a meeting with the Wali of South Darfur in Nyala.

I am here because this is obviously the biggest humanitarian operation in the world in the moment and one of the difficult operations. So clearly I wanted to come here and see for myself and to talk to the government about how this is going and how we can make it better. And the main focus of my discussions with the government officials particularly here in Khartoum was how we can best improve our cooperation and how we can create the kind of atmosphere of greater trust between us where as the problems we have, and there will always be problems in operations of this great size, how these problems can best be addressed early and constructively and informally. I think as you already aware we have already started this process some time ago and in particular after my last visit which was at the end of March this year. We signed a Joint Communiqué and established various mechanisms for dealing with these problems. The high level committee is another mechanism underneath that to look into problems to identify them, to try to resolve them before they became worse. And I think we have made some progress in using those mechanisms and both sides have put a lot of effort into that and quite a lot of those problems, bureaucratic problems that had been there before have been addressed.

But still there have been some challenges in this area about bureaucratic procedures and in particular the timeliness of some of these procedures. One example which has been talked about a little bit is the question of the speed of delivery of exit visas for NGOs workers because these are the kinds of problems which can create extra work and difficulties on the ground for people working on the ground and distract them from what they are trying to do which is obviously their main task of helping people on the ground. I agreed with those I discussed these problems with that we needed to address these extra problems as well, we needed to go on using these procedures which we have established and I was particularly pleased that we have reached a new formal agreement and formal understanding from the government that the moratorium arrangements, the fast track arrangements for dealing with these problems will be renewed. It expires at the end of January next year and I made clear my hope that the renewal will be formalized as soon as it possibly can be to remove any element of uncertainty for those who are working on the ground. And we have had some discussion about how we might be able to go on about that.

I also made it clear as I was talking to people here, both here and in Darfur, my concerns that there are still problems about access and security which cause difficulties to the humanitarian workers on the ground. And again, I think we need to work together closely to address these because these are the problems which make the humanitarian needs harder to address in practice. And they create concerns that in some areas that the conditions of the people we are trying to help may even be heading in the wrong direction. And let me make it clear that we are not only concerned with the IDPs for all those in camps, but we are trying and help other elements of the population as they are also in need. And in that context while recognizing that there may be extra needs for some of that wider population in particular, if the early indications of a poor harvest in Darfur which we heard about while we were there, we discussed with the authorities that if these early indications were indeed confirmed, I very much hope they will not be confirmed, but those are the indications at the moment.

Let me just say a couple of words about the issue of returns which is clearly a sensitive issue for all concerned. I made it very clear in all the discussions I had that, of course, we will want to see people able to return to their places of origin and able to resume their normal lives as soon as possible and where it is clear that there are proper processes of consultations in accordance with the international principles which have been established and the agreements which exist and where this process is genuinely voluntary we see no problem in helping that process and providing services for those who are returning. This is also the case where the international community can help in preparing for the day when larger scale returns might be possible when genuine security is available more widely. But just let me repeat that this process has got to be genuinely voluntary with the full participation of the people concerned themselves and safety and accessibility to them in terms of services for all concerned. So if I need to summarize very briefly, I will be happy to take your questions.

We had some useful and constructive exchanges both here in Khartoum and .. we were able to talk about in a useful fashion .. some of the challenges we still have. We have been able to deal with some of them but we recognize there are still some important challenges to address not least on the ground. Those are some of the issues I wanted to mention, some of my concerns and conclusions. And now I am happy to take your questions.

The sensitive issues of return as people want to return to their home villages as soon as possible. Consultations are underway for we see no problem in providing for their return when genuine security is available. There will be genuine voluntary return when people have genuine security.