The European Commission has agreed to relay a Sudanese government request to European Development Fund to have its Humanitarian Programme Plus of 15 millions euro executed on the resources of the 6th EDF. To spare susceptibilities, the Commission has stated that neither Khartoum nor Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA, opposition) will be implicated by implementation of this project. It will be carried out by NGOs or international agencies placed under the responsibility of a programme administration unit based in Khartoum and including two European technical assistants (whose designation will be the subject of an international Call fro bids) and local staff. This programme is intended to “improve the conditions of life and human dignity of stricken civilian populations” by re-establishing a minimum self-sufficiency in food (supplying input, access to drinking water, veterinary services, and micro-credits, and rebuilding decimated herds). It also aims at improving primary health and quality of water supplied, and must help the most destitute, including displaced persons from northern and southern Sudan. A feasibility survey was made from July to September 1999. NGOs’ advice that the prolonged duration of the emergency situation and the political crisis in Sudan requires lasting rehabilitation and development has clearly been taken into account.

I.O.N. – If EDF approves the programme, it will be the first operation undertaken under the Lome Convention since European aid to Sudan was suspended in 1990. About 195 million euro have nevertheless been disbursed since 1994 in the framework of operations financed by the Europeans’ humanitarian agency ECHO (131 million) and food aid (65 million). The Commission’s proposal indicates a changed stance on Khartoum. Staff of European Commissioner Poul Nielsen defend the idea that “The Sudanese government is now attacking the problems which had forced the Commission to suspend its cooperation with Sudan” and consider as positive “the newly started dialogue” between the European Union and Khartoum. The Commission also underlined that since 1998 the Sudanese government claimed to have granted humanitarian organisations “unprecedented levels of access to some populations” and that in October 1999, it had decreed another cease-fire extension to facilitate humanitarian operations and to support the process of peace negotiations begun under the auspices of IGAD.