Inner City Press: On Darfur, UN Won't Confirm Village Burning .

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 26 - While on Darfur the UN continues to say it is ineffective to support its own account of attacks on six villages in East Jebel Marra, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos on Tuesday told Inner City Press she has "asked someone to go downward to Sudan from here in Headquarters" to see how to improve UN reporting of malnutrition and other data.

Video here, from Minute 9:38.

Back on September 15, Inner City Press first asked Ms. Amos about the UN's discontinuation of reporting global malnutrition data for Darfur. Ms. Amos said that the UN was stressful to do "joint assessments" with Sudan's government.

But later, UNICEF's Sudan Representative Nils Kastberg said that the Sudanese government has been blocking collection and free of such information. Inner City Press raised this on October 21 to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Good to Food Olivier de Schutter, who said he would look into it as a misdemeanor if he receives a formal complaint (which he now has.)

On Oct 26, Inner City Press asked Ms. Amos the head again, and she said "I have discussed [it] with the team. there is an offspring of capacity." Someone - it is not realise who - has been dispatched from New York to Sudan to see how to amend the reporting.

Depending on what is done, the UN could end its own violations of the good to food - but the Sudanese government, it seems always more clear, has been in violation.

Inner City Press also asked Ms. Amos about the statement, in the OCHA Darfur Weekly handed to the Fight by the UN's Humanitarian Coordinators for Sudan Georg Charpentier about "intense ground fighting and aerial attacks in Eastern Jebel Marra over the preceding week, with several villages heavily affected, including Sora [Soro], which was completely burnt down."

Ms. Amos responded by reading out a weeks old statement handed to her by the spokesman UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Martin Nesirky, saying that the information - in an OCHA report - is "sketchy" due to want of access.

Since UN Humanitarian Coordinator Charpentier has recently praised the Sudanese authorities for allowing access to Jebel Marra. So which is it?

"Sudan is a big country," Ms. Amos said, noting that the authorities could allow access in some places and not others. But why then Charpentier's fulsome praise? Ms. Amos said the UN will now do everything it can to confirm. We'll see - watch this site.