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UN Condemns "Pathetic" Global Response to Darfur
By Steve Bloomfield
Inter Press Service
Tuesday 13 March 2007
Sudan's government has "orchestrated and participated in" war crimes
and crimes against humanity in Darfur, according to a report by UN investigators.
The report to the UN Human Rights Council said the situation in Darfur is "characterised
by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international
law". It called for the UN Security Cou'cil to take "urgent"
action to protect Darfur's civilians, including the deployment of a joint UN/African
Union force and the freezing of funds and assets owned by officials complicit
in the attacks.
An estimated three million people have been displaced and more than 200,000
have been killed since 2003. A peace deal was signed last May by the government
but only one of the main rebel groups. The rest refused and the violence has
only increased.
The head of the UN investigating team, the Nobel Peace laureate Jody Williams,
described the international response to the crisis as "pathetic".
The United States, Britain and the European Union have repeatedly condemned
the atrocities but have failed to carry out any of their numerous threats. The
US referred to the killings as genocide in 2004, while last year, Tony Blair
said the situation was "completely unacceptable" and called for "urgent
action". None of the resolutions passed by the Security Council regarding
Darfur has been implemented.
Attempts to negotiate ceasefires and peace deals have been sporadic and piecemeal.
A US Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson met President Omar al-Bashir
in Khartoum in January. He left trumpeting a 60-day ceasefire he had persuaded
Mr Bashir to agree to. Within the week Sudanese planes were again dropping bombs
in Darfur. Some 7,000 African Union troops are operating in Darfur but their
limited resources and mandate has made it all but impossible for them to protect
civilians. The force's 150 translators are on strike because they have not been
paid since November.
A deal appeared to have been struck last November that would have allowed the
AU mission to be strengthened into a 22,000-strong combined UN/AU force. However,
President Bashir appears to have reneged on the agreement.
Jan Pronk, who was the head of the UN mission in Sudan until he was unceremoniously
kicked out of the country by the Khartoum government, said Sudan had realised
it can "get away with anything".
In a recent posting on his weblog, Mr Pronk wrote that the Sudanese authorities
have continued to "disregard Security Council resolutions, to break international
agreements, to violate human rights and to feed and allow attacks on their own
citizens. They could do all this without having to fear consequences. On the
contrary, the Council and its members and the rest of the international community
have been taken for a ride."
The Human Rights Council team faced similar problems. President Bashir promised
UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, that Sudan would co-operate fully with the
inquiry, including granting access to Darfur. But despite more than a dozen
attempts by the UN team to apply for visas, Khartoum refused to allow them into
the country. Instead they travelled to eastern Chad where more than 230,000
Darfuri refugees have fled. The conflict has followed the refugees over the
border, with Chadian Arabs - backed by Sudanese Janjaweed militia - attacking
black tribes inside Chad.
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