SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: Guardian - Halt plan to withdraw Sudan peacekeepers, UN urged

28/5/2020: Guardian - Halt plan to withdraw Sudan peacekeepers, UN urged, by Zeinab Mohamed Salih

 The Guardian report that activists are urging the UN and African Union to shelve plans to replace its peacekeeping mission with a UN “political mission”. 

 Al-Sadiq Ali Hassan, the secretary general of the Darfur Bar Association said, “the political mission won’t solve problems… there will be a huge gap for security chaos and I expect the situation will worsen.”

 Human Rights Watch’s Jehanne Henry added: “any UN mission should have the capacity to protect [at-risk] civilians… Darfur…has a long legacy of state-sponsored violence [leaving] civilians extremely distrustful of state forces.”

 Anonymous UN officials said that UN chief advisor Nicholas Haysom made extensive calls to Hamdok “using personal diplomacy” to lobby Hamdok to accept the mission, with Hamdok losing “a lot of credibility…because he hasn’t stood up for Darfurians and instead let Hemedti and the NCP [National Congress party] dictate Sudan’s response.”

The UN denied applying pressure.