Pro-Government militia abducted 122 women and children, and killed 11 people in early January in the first mass attacks against villages in southern Sudan to be reported for about a year, United Nations officials in Khartoum said.

Seven women were among the dead, and eleven of those seized were women, the rest were children.

Militia recruited from Arabic-speaking nomadic groups in north Sudan reportedly carried out the raids in the area of Mariel Bai in Bahr al-Ghazal.

Anti-Slavery has raised its concerns over this latest report of human rights violations with the Sudan Government. We are particularly concerned that it represents a significant step backwards in the Government's expressed commitment to condemn and stop these abductions and seek, through the Committee for the Eradication of Abductions of Women and Children (CEAWC), to release and return home all those affected.

Although the Sudan Government recognises that abductions and the resulting forced labour are a problem, it does not consider either to be an issue of slavery, despite its definition under UN anti-slavery treaties.

As part of its programme to stop the practice of abductions, the Government has set up transit centres to facilitate the return of those seized in raids. At the moment, the number of people being returned via the centres is not high as 'there has been no permission to fly kids from the Government-controlled areas to SPLA-controlled areas since an SPLA offensive in Bahr al-Ghazal in June [2000],' a UN Children's Fund representative working in Sudan said.

The Government needs to make reopening the safe corridor a priority so, once again, people can be released and returned home. It should prosecute anyone responsible for new abductions and it needs to make it clear that participating in the abductions or keeping the victims for forced labour are criminal offences that will be prosecuted.