MINISTER FOR Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has said the Government is doing everything it possibly can to secure the release of two employees of the aid agency Goal who were kidnapped in Sudan last week.
As Irish negotiators arrived in the Darfur region of Sudan yesterday, Mr Martin said his officials were working on a day-to-day basis to help free Sharon Commins (32), from Dublin, and her Ugandan colleague, Hilda Kuwuki.
The two women were seized by up to eight armed men from their compound in the north Darfur town of Kutum on Friday evening. This is the third time foreigners have been abducted in Darfur in four months.
A team of Irish diplomats and trained negotiators arrived in the north Darfur capital of El Fasher, 120km (75 miles) southeast of Kutum, on Monday morning, UN officials said.
“They will be there for as long as it takes,” Ireland’s honorary consul in Khartoum, Ronnie Shaoul, said. “They are there to negotiate with whoever may have abducted the two women . . . They have a few thin lines to work on. There have been lots of rumours . . . but nothing concrete.”
He added that the delegation was still waiting to hear from the kidnappers three days after the abduction, and had no information on their motive.
Mr Martin told journalists yesterday he had been in touch with Ms Commins’s family on a number of occasions.
Irish Ambassador to Uganda Kevin Kelly yesterday met that country’s minister for foreign affairs to discuss the kidnapping, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs. Mr Kelly also met members of Ms Kuwuki’s family in the capital, Kampala.
Department officials in Dublin have also been in contact with the African Union to see what assistance that organisation might be able to provide.
Comhlamh, the Irish Association of Development Workers, appealed for the immediate release of the two aid workers unharmed. Deirdre Murray, director of Comhlamh, said the organisation’s thoughts were with Ms Commins and Ms Kuwuki and their families at this extremely distressing time. Ms Murray is a former Goal employee who has worked alongside Ms Kuwuki.
The kidnapping of the two aid workers is to be raised in the Dáil today by Labour foreign affairs spokesman Michael D Higgins.
He described their abduction as an alarming development and said Labour supported the Government’s efforts to secure their release. “This must be a difficult and worrying time for the families of the two women and their colleagues in Goal and other humanitarian aid organisations, who do such outstanding work in Darfur and elsewhere.”
Mr Higgins said the kidnapping illustrated the hazards faced by aid workers, especially in dangerous and unstable regions such as Darfur. He welcomed the Government decision to send a team of diplomats to Sudan to assist efforts to have the women released.
