By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 27 2005 (IPS)

A senior U.N. official warned Thursday that the ongoing conflicts in Africa would continue to have a “devastating impact” on civilians this year – “as it has been for many months, and in some cases, for many years”.

“The combination is deadly: insecurity, limited access, and massive humanitarian needs that keep rising as we struggle to catch up,” Jan Egeland, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told the Security Council.

Painting a grim picture of the spreading crises in Africa, Egeland said that out of 15 humanitarian appeals launched by the United Nations last year, 13 were for countries in Africa.

“I very much hope that this Council will remain as engaged in helping to address these emergencies as it has been,” Egeland added – even as he appealed to the world’s 22 rich donor nations to be more generous.

“It is very troubling,” he said, that Burundi received only about 44 percent of its emergency needs in international assistance last year; Cote d’Ivoire about 34 percent and Liberia about 48 percent.

These countries, Egeland, said are on the agenda of the Security Council, “and yet their appeals have been so severely under-funded”.

On Wednesday, the international humanitarian agency Oxfam singled out the conflict in northern Uganda, where the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been waging a 20-year civil war against the government in Kampala, as “one of Africa’s longest running open conflicts” that has displaced over 1.5 million Ugandans.

“The U.N. Security Council has been appallingly negligent of the conflict in Uganda, failing to pass a single resolution on the conflict,” says Emma Naylor, head of Oxfam in Uganda.

She said the fighting has already had “dire consequences” on the people of the country and undermined trust in the peace process.

“The United Nations must do everything in its power to ensure that the recent breakdown of peace talks does not signal a return to an all-out war,” Naylor said, in a statement released Thursday. “With the tsunami and Iraq dominating the news, Uganda must not become the silent victim.”

The Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSOPNU), a coalition of about 40 national and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), says that the conflict in Uganda has cost a total of about 1.3 billion dollars, three percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and about 100 million dollars annually.

Egeland told the Security Council that the cumulative effect of the conflict in the DRC alone has been staggering: more than 3.8 million people killed since 1998.

“This amounts to the toll of more than a dozen tsunamis,” he said, referring to the massive earthquake-generated tidal wave that has killed over 250,000 people in south and south-east Asia.

With an estimated 1,000 people dying in DRC every day, most due to easily preventable and treatable illnesses, a death toll of tsunami proportions is reached about every six months, he said.

“All sides are heavily armed, despite the arms embargo imposed by this Council last July, and the fighting may well escalate again,” Egeland warned.

Apart from the ongoing military conflicts, recurrent droughts also continue to take a heavy toll, specifically in the Horn of Africa.

In Eritrea alone, some 2.2 million people out of a total population of 3.8 million need food assistance, and the maternal malnutrition rate of 53 percent is among the highest in the world, he said.

Similarly, in Somalia and Ethiopia, successive seasons of drought have led to loss of assets, livestock and severe food insecurity in many parts of both countries.

At the same time, there are six million people in six countries in southern Africa who are unable to meet their food needs this year, primarily as a result of the “triple threat” of food insecurity, HIV/AIDS and weakened capacity for governance.

Most destructive is the impact of HIV/AIDS, Egeland said. Last year alone, AIDS caused close to one million deaths in the region.

In southern Africa, there are now four million orphans as a result of HIV/AIDS alone, giving rise to the phenomenon of “child-headed households”, left on their own, shunned by neighbours, often HIV-infected, with no protection and little access to the basics for survival.

The situation in Darfur, where Sudanese militia groups are accused of genocide, has also continued to deteriorate. Last week about 10,000 Sudanese fled several villages in southern Darfur to seek safety and assistance. In one village, about 100 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed.

“The high level of insecurity, particularly in south and west Darfur, is severely limiting our ability to reach hundreds of thousands of people who depend on our assistance to survive,” Egeland said.

In its “Africa Policy Outlook for 2005” released Wednesday, the Washington-based Africa Action criticised the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for neglecting the problems facing Africa.

“The real interests of the Bush Administration in Africa are oil and geo-strategic alliances, and the measure of its commitment to African priorities must be judged this year by its actions on debt cancellation, on HIV/AIDS and on genocide in Darfur,” Africa Action’s executive director Salih Booker said.

While new international focus on Africa is warranted, he said, “the sad reality is that 2005 risks being another year of compassionate showmanship rather than a year of sea change”.

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