A stark warning from United Nations officials about an unfolding refugee crisis affecting two million people in the western Darfur region of Sudan must be taken up immediately by the international community if another humanitarian catastrophe there is to be avoided.
Speaking in Dublin Mr Jan Egelund, a UN under-secretary general, described how one million people have been displaced internally and roughly the same number have lost everything or been made refugees in neighbouring countries after 15 months of vicious attacks by the Janjaweed militia. As Mr Egelund said, "an Arab Muslim militia has been raping, pillaging, ethnically cleansing African Muslim farmers, nomads and herdsmen in large areas of Darfur - areas much larger than Ireland".
He accused the Sudanese government of at least condoning these attacks; Amnesty International says those responsible have had complete impunity. In New York the UN secretary general, Mr Kofi Annan, warned that failure to tackle this crisis will imperil the recent agreements reached to resolve the larger one within Sudan between the Khartoum-based government and rebel forces in the south of the country.
Sudan is reckoned to have suffered from civil war for all but 11 of the 48 years since it became independent from British rule in 1956. For most of this time the conflict has pitched the Islamic and Arab north of the vast country against the African, Christian or animist peoples in the south. Geographical differences reinforce these socio-political ones, while competition for oil, land and other natural resources has also provoked conflict. At least two million people have died and double that number have been displaced (out of a total population of 32 million), drawing in most neighbouring states.
The Khartoum-based government of President Omar el-Bashir and the leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Organisation, Mr John Garang, reached an agreement last month in Nairobi on power and wealth sharing and a six-year period of autonomous government in the south of Sudan. A UN and African Union peacekeeping force would oversee it.
This agreement will unravel unless humanitarian aid and food are made available urgently in Darfur. There is a shortfall of $50-70 million in the short-term requirements after a donor conference last week. The approaching rainy season will make it much more difficult and expensive to deliver food, provide shelter and gather harvest interrupted by the campaign of intimidation. The case for emergency action is convincingly made and overwhelmingly necessary. The rest of the world must now respond.