By IRNA,
London : The world must act now to prevent the collapse of a 2005 peace deal in Sudan, ten international aid agencies warned Thursday.
The aid agencies, including British-based Oxfam International, called for urgent diplomatic effort to prop up fragile five-year-old comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) that ended decades of civil strife.
“With landmark elections and a referendum on the horizon, the peace deal is fragile and the violence likely to escalate even further unless there is urgent international engagement,” they said in a joint briefing paper.
Guarantors of the CPA, including the US, the EU and the UN, were accused of being distracted by the crisis in Darfur and failing to take a tough stand in response to clear violations of the agreement.
The agencies blamed a “lethal cocktail” of rising violence, chronic poverty and political tensions that could kill off the agreement, including planned elections in April and a referendum in southern Sudan next year.
Oxfam pointed to a surge of violence last year in southern Sudan, with the death of 2,500 people and the flight of 350,000 people from their homes.
Ahead of the warnings, Britain announced a £54m ($85m) aid package for humanitarian aid for elections with most of the money to be used by UN agencies and NGOs to provide emergency water and sanitation, healthcare and shelter.
The Sudanese archbishop, Daniel Deng, is also scheduled to visit the UK to see Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams this weekend as part of an international campaign to lobby world leaders for concerted international action.