Fact Sheet:  UNAMID Helicopters

The deployment of the United Nations – African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has been marked by a series of delays and missed deadlines. While Sudan's obstruction is the primary hindrance to UNAMID deployment, it is also inexcusable that the international community has not provided the 24 helicopters that everyone agrees are essential to UNAMID’s success. The Save Darfur Coalition is launching a new campaign to urge international cooperation to secure and deploy these helicopters immediately.

What is needed?

The UNAMID force requires three Medium Utility Helicopter Wings and one Light Tactical Helicopter Wing (totaling 18 transport and six tactical helicopters, with associated troops) to operate effectively across the Darfur region, and to move the supplies and equipment necessary to carry out its mandate.
These units are critical to UNAMID’s ability to protect civilians more effectively than the existing African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS), which lacks the requisite type of helicopters and the mandate to deploy them effectively. UNAMID will be operating in a hostile desert environment with only dirt tracks between the major towns. Absent helicopters, UNAMID will have limited rapid-response capability, and will be unable to reach many areas at all.

To date, not a single helicopter has been committed to UNAMID. The international community is handing the Sudanese government an easy excuse to explain delays in UNAMID’s deployment and an opportunity to direct attention away from Khartoum’s role in the escalating violence now characterizing Darfur.

The following countries have appropriate helicopters that they can make available for UNAMID:

What needs to be done?

Darfur advocates around the world can help pressure their governments to take critical and urgent action. The Save Darfur Coalition has launched a petition to urge the Bush Administration to take the lead. The petition calls on the Administration to:

1. Provide helicopters to help UNAMID fulfill its mission, or
2. Use all diplomatic resources, including the President himself, to press other nations to provide these helicopters.
3. Create, with other developed nations, an international fund to ensure that any country can respond positively to a U.N. request for helicopters without incurring financial obligations. Such a fund, which would likely need less than $50 million through June, would be helpful because many of the countries with available and appropriate helicopters are incapable of supplying them without financial support.