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.