Noting that the “humanitarian access situation” in the south has “deteriorated sharply” this year, the OCHA report said that the most commonly reported problem in 2011 to date was the “commandeering of humanitarian vehicles and demands for use of humanitarian assets by (the) Sudan People’s Liberation Army.”
While the southern army’s appropriating of aid group supplies is a significant part of the current problem, the sheer fact that army-rebel fighting is occurring in areas where civilians and soldiers, families and rebels, live closely together, is another reason why harm to civilians and their properties has been such a prominent facet of the army campaigns against rebels across the oil-producing Greater Upper Nile region.
“The general point is, the operations by all the parties [to the violence] are done without any respect for human rights and humanitarian principles,” one Western official told me last week in the southern capital.
Since the outbreak of violence between rebel forces loyal to a war-time Khartoum-backed militia leader, Peter Gadet, and the SPLA in late April in oil-rich Unity state, independent international aid groups including Médécins san Frontiéres (Doctors Without Borders) have told the Monitor that a combination of conflict-related factors are inhibiting their work on malnutrition, water and sanitation, and other vital health and livelihoods activity.
