UN begins pull out from Darfur
African Union and United Nations peacekeepers in Sudan’s Darfur region are carrying out their final patrols as the thirteen year mission officially comes to an end. Following a peace deal with rebel groups in October the Sudanese government is to take over security in the region where hundreds of thousands have died since conflict broke out in 2003. One and a half million people still live in displacement camps in Darfur. Attacks in the region are still common and many civilians are concerned about the imminent pull out of peacekeepers. We hear from the head of the UN mission, and a Darfuri living in exile. Also in the programme: Today marks the official end of Britain's 40-year membership of the European Union; and the rapid surge in Covid-19 cases in the UK is being attributed to the emergence of a new variant of the coronavirus which is highly infectious… Britain prides itself on probably having the world's best surveillance programme, so why does the US compare so badly? (Photo: Sudanese children walk past an armoured vehicle of the United Nations and African Union peacekeeping mission (UNAMID) in Kalma Camp for internally displaced people in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, on December 30, 2020. - The United Nations Security Council has agreed to end the UNAMID's long-running peacekeeping mission in Darfur when its mandate ceases on December 31. The withdrawal of UNAMID, deployed since 2007 and which had 16,000 peacekeepers at its peak, will begin January 1 and is expected to be completed by June 30 2021. Credit: AFP via Getty Images)