TRIPOLI (AFP) — The Organisation of the Islamic Conference on Friday announced a project to step up help to the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur following last month's expulsion of 13 international aid agencies.
The plan envisages "urgent and continued aid services," help for refugees to go home and rebuilding in the war-torn western region, according to documents presented to a conference in Libya of humanitarian agencies in OIC member states.
However, Atta al-Manan Bakhit, deputy general secretary of the Saudi-based IOC, denied that his organisation was seeking to replace the departed aid groups.
"Our aim is to coordinate the action of Muslim NGOs already active in Darfur in coordination with the United Nations. These NGOs have very few resources and cannot remain in the field for long," he told AFP.
A new meeting within the next month will officially launch a programme of "media campaigns and donations in all member countries," Bakhit said.
The project "should be operational in two months at the latest," he told the conference, attended by around 30 agencies from 12 countries including Sudan.
Khartoum expelled 13 major international NGOs and closed three local ones on March 4 after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Beshir for suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
The departure of the agencies left an aid funding gap estimated at 402 million dollars for the next nine months, according to a report by unspecified Sudanese "national agencies" distributed on the sidelines of the conference and citing the findings of a joint UN-Sudanese mission.
The OIC said 25 organisations from its member countries operate in Darfur, around 20 percent of all NGOs and international agencies active in the region.
Beshir has vowed not to cooperate with the arrest warrant and the IOC has condemned the court's action as "unwarranted, totally unacceptable."
According to the United Nations, 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels rose up against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government in February 2003.
Sudan puts the death toll from the six-year conflict at 10,000.
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