SUDAN POLITICAL ALERT: US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations - Chairman Menendez Statement for Senate Record on Escalating Violence in Darfur Following UNAMID Dissolution
US Senator Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calls for US President Joe Biden to appeal to the UN Security Council to reconsider the withdrawal of the UN-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID).
Menendez said that continued inter-communal clashes and violence in Darfur, alongside the looting of UNAMID sites, suggests that the government’s security plans "have yet to be adequately fleshed out, let alone implemented".
“Most worryingly”, Menendez added, those likely to be charged with protecting civilians in Darfur, including components of the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), “are the same actors that for years worked to implement Omar al-Bashir’s campaign of terror and genocide.”
Menendez further criticised the government’s refusal to extend UNAMID’s mandate to work with the “political” United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITMAS)” stating that “supporting the transition and protecting vulnerable civilians are not mutually exclusive”.