EU offers $124 million in humanitarian aid for Sudan
KHARTOUM: The European Commission on Monday announced a €106 million ($124 million) aid package for Sudan, saying around 4.8 million people needed urgent humanitarian assistance in the African country.
The new aid comes at a time when UN aid agencies are facing an acute shortage of funds from global donors to meet relief needs in Sudan.
The package was announced as EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides was on a visit to Sudan, including to conflict-hit areas of Darfur.
“Here in Sudan the humanitarian situation continues to be critical,” Stylianides said in a statement issued by the European Commission.
“Millions have been displaced for many, many years in Darfur,” he said, adding that the new EU funding will also assist refugees from South Sudan since a conflict erupted in their country in December 2013.
Of the total €106 million, €46 million will address humanitarian needs like food, nutrition, health, protection, shelter, education, water and sanitation, the European Commission said.
The remaining €60 million are to be channeled through the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, to support displaced people, migrants and host communities.
The UN aid agencies have been facing an acute shortage of funds in 2017 to meet humanitarian needs of millions of people in Sudan.
The UN agencies had appealed for $804 million in aid for Sudan for 2017, but as of end September only 38 percent of that had been raised, the UN says.
It says the lack of funds has led to dozens of health facilities being closed in conflict zones of Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan.
Editor convicted
A Sudanese court on Monday sentenced a prominent newspaper editor to six months in jail for publishing an article accusing President Omar Al-Bashir’s family of corruption, the journalist told AFP.
The court also gave a three-year suspended jail term to the writer of the piece which was published in 2012.
“The court has ordered me to pay 10,000 Sudanese pounds ($1,428) or go to jail for six months,” Osman Mirgani, editor in chief of the independent daily Al-Tayar, said.
“I have decided not to pay the money, and am waiting for the authorities to take me to jail.”
Mirgani said that in the article, writer “Mohamed Zine El-Abidine accused Al-Bashir’s family of being corrupt.”
After it was published, Sudan’s powerful National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) filed cases against both Mirgani and El-Abidine. After the court pronounced its sentence on Monday, the government denied it had intervened in the judicial proceedings.
“This was a case in the court and we never interfere in court cases,” Information Minister Ahmed Bilal told reporters after Mirgani was sentenced.
“However, journalists have no immunity when they are convicted of insulting someone.”
Mirgani, a US-educated engineer turned journalist, has been regularly targeted for his aggressive style of speaking out against the authorities and over corruption scandals his paper has exposed.
NISS agents often confiscate the entire print runs of editions of Al-Tayar over articles that they deem inappropriate.
Mirgani was once beaten up by armed men who stormed his office in central Khartoum in July 2014.
In its 2016 report, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Sudan near the bottom of a world press freedom index, saying that the NISS “hounds journalists and censors the print media.”