Sudan Plans to 'Nationalize' Aid Effort, Exclude NGOs

Bloomberg News
16 March 2009
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=a.bQHkWUHK_U&refer=canada

KHARTOUM - Sudan plans to take over all humanitarian aid work in the country within a year and foreign non-governmental organizations may have to leave, an official at the presidency said.
“If the Sudanese government is doing the job, then automatically there will be no reason for these NGOs to exist in the country,” Osman Nafie, head of the political department at the presidency, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Khartoum. “We will say ‘Thank you. You did your job.’”

President Umar al-Bashir outlined his plan for what he called the “Sudanization” of humanitarian relief in a speech at a rally today on the outskirts of Khartoum, Nafie said. The decision doesn’t apply to the United Nations or the International Committee of the Red Cross, Nafie said.

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