Irish Government must review its €170m aid to Tanzania

Media Statement, 15th August 2007

The announcement that the United Nation’s (UN) new Darfur force will be exclusively African is entirely predictable, the aid agency GOAL said today.

GOAL has maintained from the outset that the UN hybrid force was a cop-out on the part of the international community.  GOAL CEO John O’Shea commented, “The international community never wanted to get involved in sending troops to Darfur.  Now that the African Union (AU) has stated it doesn’t need any non-African troops, they have been given the perfect excuse to sit back on their laurels, while genocide occurs.” 

O’Shea has always contended that the AU is not capable of protecting the 3.5 million people currently reliant on humanitarian aid, and the many millions of others who are in danger.  “The 7,000 AU troops already in place have failed in their mission to protect the vulnerable, allowing more than 400,000 people to die to date. What guarantee do we have that 26,000 African soldiers will succeed?”

Minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea, last week indicated that 300 Irish troops could be deployed to join the UN’s Darfur mission.  But O’Shea said then that there was no point in doing so unless the troops being sent could act in a meaningful way to prevent genocide.

"Joining an army which is entitled only to monitor a genocide, and hasn't permission to prevent it, is quite useless," O'Shea said.

GOAL described this as yet another example of passing the buck.  “The people of Darfur will be shocked and saddened by this latest development”, O’Shea concluded.

For more information, contact John O’Shea: 086 8527427 / 01 2809779

GOAL is an International Humanitarian Organisation currently operational in 11 countries throughout the developing world.