The United Nations refugee chief, Antonio Guterres, started his 10-day tour on Monday to visit Sudan, Chad and Kenya. The former Portuguese prime minister will examine the fate of millions of civilians that have been displaced in war-torn Darfur and the south of the country which has recently been subdued. Before his arrival he voiced his concern that the world community was ignoring conflicts in Africa, such as what is happening in Sudan.

"It is obvious that there should have been a much stronger effort on the part of the international community to create the conditions for peace but Africa is a continent which is largely forgotten," Gutteres told Lisbon radio.

"We see that the international community mobilises easily in other parts of the world but when it comes to Africa there has been a systematic negligence which has prolonged conflicts like this one [Sudan] and gave rise to a serious food crisis in Niger," he added.

"There is a question of the world's responsibility towards Africa which needs to be taken seriously."

The UN refugee chief is scheduled to meet President Omar al-Beshir, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail and other officials in Sudan on Tuesday. He will tour camps in Darfur which is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people still suffering two and a half years after a deadly rebellion broke out which destroyed the villages. The region faces a humanitarian crisis after the uprising by the black African minority which was repressed by Beshir’s Arab Muslim regime and its proxy militias.

Since the rebellion in February 2003, between 180,000 and 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur and over two million displaced after fleeing the conflict and famine.

Neightbouring Chad shelters 200,000 refugess from Darfur. Gutteres is expected to visit two of the 12 camps there. Though the fighting decreased since last year, people have continously flocked to refugee camps even where they can find better conditions of living than in their home villages.

Last week, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s special representative in Sudan, Jan Pronk, said that Darfur was "much more stable than before."

Nearly 10,000 aid workers are operating in Darfur and thousands more in south Sudan, which also faces a huge humanitarian crisis.

Gutteres plans to visit southern Sudan next week to assess plans to repatriate 500,000 refugees and 4.6 million displaced people after the end of the 21-year civil war in the area.

John Garang, the historic rebel leader of the mainly Christian south, who had been appointed as first vice president, was killed in a helicopter crash near the border with Uganda on July 30. Deadly riots arose in Khartoum due to angry southerners who were suspicious that the crash was not an accident. The violence threatened to damage the north-south peace deal signed in January.

After visiting Darfur, Chad and southern Sudan, the refugee commissioner will then fly to Kenya, which houses 65,000 Sudanese refugees and operates the humnitarian operation for south Sudan.

Other neighbouring countries such as Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia and Eritrea, houses tens of thousands of refugees.