Poor security leads to rampant crime in Darfur’s Otash camp

Deteriorating security conditions in and around Otash camp, South Darfur, have led to complaints by displaced people.
An activist in the camp near Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, told Radio Dabanga that bandits robbed two displaced women who were returning from their farm after a workday. “The gunmen stripped them off their mobile phones and fled.
“In another incident in Otash on Friday night, three armed men stormed the camp, threatened three residents, and took their phones.”
He appealed to Unamid to resume its patrols, which have stopped both within and around Otash, to maintain security. The activist asked the South Darfur Governor, Adam El Faki, to somehow control the militiamen that terrorise people.
In the beginning of May, a camp leader in Otash also reported a series of robberies and assaults over a period of a few days. Later that month, the newly appointed UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in the Sudan, Aristide Nononsi, visited the camp. Nononsi stressed that the displaced live in a state of insecurity owing to the presence of various armed elements and criminality that occur within the region.