Sudan letting back renamed aid groups: U.N. official

By Claudia Parsons
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Four aid groups expelled from Sudan in March have been authorized by Khartoum to send new teams under new names and new logos back into the country, the top U.N. humanitarian official said on Thursday.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir ordered 13 foreign aid agencies to leave north Sudan in March after the International Criminal Court indicted him for war crimes in the western Darfur region.
Khartoum had accused aid groups of giving the ICC information about alleged atrocities in Darfur, where the United Nations says six years of conflict has killed up to 300,000 people and uprooted more than 2.7 million. Khartoum says 10,000 people have died.
Briefing the U.N. Security Council, undersecretary-general John Holmes said the expulsions were unjustified but the Sudanese government had since made progress in improving cooperation with the United Nations over humanitarian access.
He said the government had made clear it would welcome existing and new international non-governmental agencies (NGOs), including NGOs with new names and logos.
"That possibility is there for all the organizations that were expelled and some of them have already taken advantage of that, and have got very recently new registrations, and will be restarting their operations," Holmes told reporters.
"Four have already applied for new registration under their slightly changed new names and they have been accepted. I think the same possibility is open to others," he said.
He identified the four expelled groups as Oregon-based Mercy Corps, U.S.-based CARE International, Save the Children U.S. and PADCO, a humanitarian contractor that had been involved in rebuilding war-ravaged areas.
Mercy Corps said earlier this week it was discussing sending in new teams under the flag of Mercy Corps Scotland, an affiliated Edinburgh-based charity.
Holmes said it was unclear how soon they would be able to restart operations since local staff may have found other jobs and the aid groups' equipment and assets may have been lost.
Other expelled non-governmental organizations include Britain's Oxfam and the French and Dutch arms of Medecins Sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders.
Before March, the United Nations and aid groups were running the world's largest humanitarian operation in Darfur. The expelled agencies carried out 40 percent of humanitarian work in the region, which is roughly the size of France.
U.N. agencies have said they could not fill the gap left by their NGO partners, which distributed food aid and provided clean water and healthcare across Darfur.
(Editing by Eric Walsh)

Source: Reuters