Hungarian UN Employee Freed in Sudan’s Darfur Province

Earthtimes.org via undpi.org

Nairobi/Khartoum – A Hungarian citizen working for the United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s restive Darfur province has been released after 90 days in captivity, the UN said.

The mission, known as UNAMID, said in a statement that the man appeared to be in good health after his release on Wednesday afternoon.

“We are thankful to have our colleague back with us, safe and sound,” said UNAMID chief Ibrahim Gambari.

Armed men took the Hungarian and two colleagues from their home in the North Darfur town of El Fasher on October 7, although the others managed to escape from the moving vehicle they were bundled into.

The release came as “the result of the efforts of the Sudanese authorities,” UNAMID said.

Kidnappings of aid workers and peacekeepers for ransom are common in Darfur, which has been plagued by conflict and insecurity since 2003, when mainly non-Arab tribesmen took up arms against what they called decades of neglect and discrimination by Khartoum.

The UN estimates 300,000 people have died and almost 3 million have been displaced as a result of the conflict, while Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.

UNAMID said ten peacekeepers in total have been abducted since the mission began in 2008, but it said it would not be “deterred by such acts of violence and criminal activities against its peacekeepers.”   Please see the original here

Kidnappers release four UN South African peacekeepers in Darfur

Earthtimes April 26

New York – Four United Nations peacekeepers from South Africa were released Monday after 16 days in captivity in Sudan’s Darfur region, the UN said.The four police advisers, two women and two men, in the UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) were abducted in Nyala on April 11. They underwent medical examinations and were flown back to their home country, the UN said.Ibrahim Gambari, the UNAMID special representative, was in Nyala to greet the four peacekeepers.”We are grateful to have our colleagues back with us,” Gambari said in a statement published at UN headquarters in New York. He said the release was made possible thanks to the intervention of the Khartoum government with the “local authorities” in southern Darfur. The UN did not say who the kidnappers were.

Four South African police advisors serving with UN-AU force in Darfur are missing

Update

Peacekeepers kidnapped in Darfur ‘in good health’

KHARTOUM — Four South African peacekeepers from the joint UN-African Union mission who were kidnapped this week in the western Sudanese region of Darfur are “in good health,” UNAMID told AFP on Friday.

“We were able to talk to them this morning. They are in good health,” UNAMID spokesman Nouredine Mezni said. “We are doing our outmost to secure their release.”

“The Sudanese authorities know the identity of the kidnappers but they want to make sure their release takes place in the best possible conditions,” Mezni said.

South African authorities said on Thursday, they were “confident” the issue would be resolved soon.

EDITH M. LEDERER at The LA Times

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Four South African police advisors serving with the international peacekeeping force in Darfur are missing, the force said late Wednesday.

The unarmed advisors — two women and two men — have not been heard from since 4 p.m. local time on Sunday shortly after they left their team site outside Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, on a 4 mile (7 kilometer) trip back to their private quarters, the joint United Nations-African Union force known as UNAMID said in a statement.

“Despite an all-out effort on every front, the peacekeepers and their vehicle remain unaccounted for,” UNAMID’s Joint Special Representative Ibrahim Gambari said in a statement.

“Our concern is that that we are now facing a carjacking and abduction situation,” he said.

Gambari dismissed media reports that UNAMID had been contacted with any demands.

UNAMID said it has mobilized all its resources in the region and is working in close cooperation with the Sudanese government and local authorities in the search for the missing peacekeepers, who were not identified.

The Darfur conflict began in February 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in Khartoum, claiming discrimination and neglect. Khartoum is accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes and unleashing militias on civilian populations — a charge the government denies.

U.N. officials say at least 300,000 people have lost their lives from violence, disease and displacement, and 2.7 million have been driven from their homes.

While the number of people dying because of the Darfur conflict has diminished, crime has not.

Last year, two international staff members working for UNAMID, two international aid workers, and a staff member for an international aid organization were abducted.

In a report in late November, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the incidents of hostage taking of international workers “a new and deeply troubling development in Darfur, with the potential to undermine the efforts of the international community.”

These incidents, as well as ambushes, carjackings and violent robberies of staff residences “underscore the extremely difficult and volatile conditions” in which UNAMID and humanitarian workers are working, Ban said.  Original Here

U.N. missions in some countries broke rules: watchdog

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – U.N. missions in several world troublespots neglected proper security procedures and financial controls, exposing the world body to unnecessary risks, according to an internal report made public on Tuesday.

The report by the U.N. watchdog the Office of Internal Oversight Services, or OIOS, covering 2009, found fault with operations in a series of countries but focused especially on Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq.

The report “highlights deficiencies in internal controls in a range of areas, from contract management to air operations, that expose the (United Nations) to unnecessary risk,” OIOS head Inga-Britt Ahlenius said in a preface.

“Lack of compliance with standard operating procedures, poor planning and inadequate management are just a few of the types of deficiencies identified.”

Reports of U.N. mismanagement are watched closely by critics of the world body, especially in the United States — the largest contributor to the U.N. budget — who charge that the organization is rife with waste and corruption.

In the violent western Sudanese region of Darfur, the unit found that security precautions and preparations by a joint U.N. and African Union peacekeeping force that now stands at 20,000 troops and police were inadequate for the risks.

The force known as UNAMID, which has lost 22 soldiers and police since the beginning of 2008, made some improvements, the 23-page report said, after OIOS recommended that “urgent measures” be taken.

The report, commissioned by the U.N. General Assembly, also criticized UNAMID for overpaying a fuel contractor $4.7 million because of a failure to verify invoices properly.

POOR CONTROLS

Turning to the troubled peacekeeping mission in Congo, which has nearly 22,000 troops and police, the report charged there were “weak” physical controls over access to cashiers’ offices and vaults. The report did not mention if any losses resulted.

OIOS also probed allegations of sexual misconduct in Congo by U.N. soldiers from an unidentified country and found preliminary evidence some had sexually exploited and abused minors at several refugee camps between 2007 and 2009.

It gave no further details. The U.N. mission, MONUC, has been dogged by claims of sexual misbehavior, including nearly 60 last year, far more than in any other country, according to a U.N. website, http://cdu.unlb.org/. The world body refers such cases to authorities in the troop-contributing country.

The report further found that maintenance of airfields in Congo by MONUC failed to comply with International Civil Aviation Organization standards.

In Iraq, OIOS found that the U.N. mission UNAMI, which is entirely civilian, had awarded a $3 million contract for installing overhead protection in staff accommodation on the basis of a single bid. The mission refused to review why there had been no competitive bidding, the report said.

UNAMI had also violated regulations by not reviewing and updating regularly its security plan, the U.N. watchdog said.

In the Central African Republic, the report said failures in internal controls had put the U.N. mission’s resources “at risk for fraud, waste and mismanagement” and led to erroneous payroll payments and unreconciled bank statements.

Original Story at Rueters