Women gather next to a food distribution centre at Galap camp for displaced people, north of the Darfur town of Fasher, June 14, 2006.
REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra
What do Darfur's people really think?
It's right to ask Darfur's people what they want from the future, and there is provision for this in the May peace agreement signed by the government and one of the rebel groups.
But the warring parties need to agree to listen, otherwise it could turn into a empty exercise that will raise people's hopes and then not take their views into account, U.S.-based advocacy organisation Refugees International (RI) says.
At least two rebel factions refused to sign the May peace deal and new factions have formed, sparking an increase in violence that aid agencies say has uprooted tens of thousands of people in the past few weeks.
"The (Darfur Peace Agreement) is only words on paper. It means nothing to us. Our lives have only gotten worse since it was signed," said a tribal leader from the Fur tribe quoted by RI.
Displaced people in camps in Darfur have demonstrated against the peace accord, but RI says the clause on consultation - officially known as the Darfur-Darfur Dialogue and Consultation - could be a useful way of bringing in opinions from people whose views haven't been heard at all.
That would mean talking to women, for example. Around 80 percent of people in Darfur's camps are women and children, according to RI. It says rebel movements represent less than 20 percent of the population of Darfur, and the cattle-herding Rizeigat people from the Arab Baggara tribe haven't been included in talks so far either.
However, RI warns there's no clear definition of the aims of the consultion, nor how it would take place. It believes one big conference wouldn't really work, and quotes Mudawi Ibrahim, chairman of the Sudanese Development Organisation: "It has to start from the grassroots and build up in layers, until the final conference is reached."
Including all Darfur's tribes
Two of Darfur's largest ethnic groups are no longer represented in the peace process, British campaign organisation Minority Rights Group points out.
Before the May agreement, the largest rebel grouping was the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), which originally united supporters from all three of the region's main tribes - the Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleit. But since May, rebels have split increasingly along tribal lines.
The only rebel signatory was SLA factional leader Minni Arcua Minnawi, who is a Zaghawa, as are about 8 percent of Darfur's population.
But Minnawi represents only part of the Zaghawa ethnic group. Rival rebel organisation, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), is also mostly Zaghawa but rejected the agreement.
The leader of a rival SLA faction, Abdel Wahed Mohammed al-Nur, also refused to sign. Nur is a Fur, which at 30 percent of the region's population is the largest ethnic group in Darfur.
A new SLA faction emerged in July 2006, led by commanders who deserted both Minnawi and Nur.
"All communities suffered immensely in the Darfur conflict. If only some are represented in the peace agreement then how can the agreement be seen as substantive?" asks MRG's conflict and genocide prevention specialist, Zoe Gray.
And here's a date for your diary - MRG is calling for September 17 to be a "Day for Darfur".
Ruth Gidley
AlertNet journalist
Is aid funding terrorism?
We're used to questioning how our aid donations are spent. Is the money going to the people who most need it? How do we know it's not being wasted on bureaucracy and mismanagement?
Increasingly, however, Muslim charities are being asked to prove that they are not using their funds for extremist political and religious ends.
Alleged links between Islamic aid agencies and fundamentalist groups are again under scrutiny following the announcement by Britain's charity watchdog that it's freezing the bank accounts of Crescent Relief, a UK-based group.
Recent media reports have connected the organisation, which raised funds for the Pakistan earthquake response last year, with at least two of the 23 suspects now being questioned in connection with the latest alleged plot to bomb transatlantic flights.
According to The Times newspaper, Crescent Relief London was created by Abdul Rauf from Birmingham, the father of two men arrested as part of the bombing inquiry. The article says the charity could provide the missing link between the apparently unconnected suspects, many of whom it is now thought were involved in fundraising for the quake.
The Charity Commission, a British government department, has launched a formal inquiry into the group.
But when it comes to government treatment of Muslim charities, the New York Times has highlighted an interesting divergence in approaches on either side of the Atlantic, reflecting what it describes as a disagreement about where charity ends and extremism begins.
Since September 11, the report says, American officials have banned many charities that still operate freely in Britain, where aid groups are judged more on their track record in providing relief than on their possible ties to extremists.
Nevertheless, Muslim charities in Britain complain that they are receiving undue scrutiny from authorities, to the point of bias.
"We have to prove that we're not doing anything," said Ibrahim Hewitt, the chairman of the trustees of Interpal, a charity that is again being investigated by the Charity Commission for funding schools for Palestinians that promote Hamas.
"It's the old weapons of mass destruction thing," he told the New York Times. "We have to prove a negative."
Whether governments use the iron fist or the velvet glove, tracking charity involvement in terrorism is seen as increasingly tricky.
In the Crescent Relief case, no one is maintaining that the charity was set up specifically to fund extremists. The argument is that extremists allegedly infiltrated the organisation, siphoning off funds while using its aid operations as cover for travel to and from Pakistan.
In a bid to inject greater transparency into the dealings of Muslim charities, aid group Islamic Relief has teamed up with Oxfam and the British Red Cross to create a global "Humanitarian Forum" network aimed at boosting accountability and further integrating Muslim non-governmental organisations into the international field of humanitarian relief and development cooperation.
Islamic Relief's advocacy officer, Adeel Jafferi, says the initiative is directly counteracting the "suspicion and innuendo" that have surrounded Muslim charities since September 11, pointing out that the "vast majority" have been proved to have absolutely no links with extremism.
"Muslim charities have been under higher scrutiny," he told Alertnet, but he added that appropriate investigations into Islamic aid groups were vital contributions to the overall mechanism of transparency.
"As far as we're concerned, the Charity Commission is performing a difficult job as sensitively as possible. Its role is very important."
Sri Lanka's new displacement crisis
The U.N. refugee agency has dramatically revised upwards its calculation of the number of people uprooted by renewed violence between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels in the country's north and east.
As staff have gained greater access to areas of the country previously cut off by fighting, the agency said in a statement that the number of people displaced since April now stands at 204,602. Only a few days ago, the estimate stood at 169,000.
In addition to those displaced within Sri Lanka, another 8,742 Sri Lankan refugees have arrived in India since the start of the year, it said.
As we reported in our newsblog two days ago, the escalating violence has now effectively halted most tsunami reconstruction work in the region, with aid agencies saying they're having to prioritise emergency work to feed and shelter the tens of thousands of displaced civilians.
Some relief agencies have also pulled staff out of the eastern port town of Trincomalee following the execution-style killing of 17 Action Against Hunger workers in the northeastern town of Mutur.
And as if all that wasn't enough, international rights groups are - yet again - expressing profound concern
over the resurgence of atrocities committed by both sides in this conflict.
It's a dismal picture, compounded by the refusal of both sides to take any kind of responsibility for the behaviour of their own forces, resorting instead to the all-too-familiar game of pointing the figure at the other side.
Once again, it would seem, the gloves are off in Sri Lanka.
For up-to-date news on the conflict and the background click here.
Mark Snelling
Alertnet journalist
