GOAL evacuate international staff from Sudan's violent Darfur region

Friday, 8 December. The continuing deterioration of the security situation has forced GOAL to withdraw all remaining international staff from Darfur after three years of work, providing humanitarian relief to 220,000 war victims. 

The three remaining GOALies are being evacuated, along with other international staff, to Khartoum, where the aid agency will run the programmes through local staff. In a statement GOAL's John O'Shea said: “For three years we have begged the international community to send in an international peacekeeping force to protect innocent civilians and keep the aid channels open. But our cries have fallen on deaf ears, forcing us to take this very difficult decision. “It is clear that the international community does not rate the lives of the 4 million in the region desperately in need of protection by the international community,” he said.  “Leaving this already devastated civilian population further exposed and at risk is the very last option but we simply cannot put the lives of our GOALies in danger.

“The risk to civilians is greater now than at any time in the past. Their fate now lies in the hands of the Sudanese government, the Janjaweed and numerous rebel factions,” O'Shea added. Several GOAL vehicles have been hijacked in recent months, and a GOAL staff member was killed during a forced emergency evacuation earlier this year.  Thirteen aid workers have been killed in Darfur since the signing of an unpopular peace agreement in May this year.