UN Security Council threatens sanctions against Sudan on Darfur by Human Rights Watch /The Washington Post / Witness 12:07pm 17th Sep, 2004   September 19, 2004    UN Council votes for resolution on Darfur. (Reuters)    The UN security council adopted a resolution today that threatens oil sanctions against Sudan if Khartoum does not stop atrocities in the Darfur region. The vote was 11-0, with four abstentions, on the US-drafted resolution that also calls for an expanded African Union (AU) monitoring force and a probe into human rights abuses including genocide. China, Russia, Algeria and Pakistan abstained.    China earlier threatened to veto the measure and its UN envoy, Wang Guangya, consulted with US ambassador John Danforth until the last minute. ''We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,'' Wang told reporters before the vote.    The resolution says Sudan has to cooperate with an expanded AU monitoring mission in Darfur, where an estimated 50,000 people have been killed and 1.2 million forced out of their homes.    UN officials hope at least 3,000 AU monitors and troops go to Darfur to investigate and serve as a bulwark against abuses.    It also calls for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to set up a commission that would investigate human rights abuses and determine if genocide had occurred, as the US believes it has, in the western Sudanese region where Arab militia have been terrorising African villagers.    ''We act today because the government of Sudan has failed to fully comply with out previous resolution, adopted on July 30,'' Danforth said. ''The crisis in Darfur is uniquely grave. It is the largest humanitarian disaster in the world.''    The latest version before the council urges African rebels and all other parties to the faltering AU negotiations to sign an agreement on security quickly. Rebels began an uprising in Darfur in February 2003 after years of skirmishes between mainly African farmers and Arab nomads over land and water in the area as large as France.    The government turned to the militia, drawn chiefly from the nomadic Arab population, to help suppress the rebels but the Janjaweed, often backed by government forces, escalated the conflict, raping villagers and pillaging.Over the past week, the US softened language on sanctions and eliminated a call for Sudan to stop all military flights over Darfur.    But the resolution retains the main action points: a threat of sanctions, a commission to investigate the possibility of genocide and an expanded AU monitoring force US and UN officials hope will reach about 3,000 troops and observers and serve as a bulwark to further abuse.    Specifically, the resolution says that if Sudan does not comply with its demands or cooperate ''with the expansion and extension'' of the AU mission, the council ''shall consider taking additional measures ... such as actions to affect Sudan's petroleum sector and the government of Sudan or individual members of the government of Sudan''.    20.09.2004.    WITNESS (http://www.witness.org) and Human Rights Watch (http://hrw.org/) today released a new video documenting atrocities committed against civilians in Darfur, western Sudan. As Human Rights Watch has documented, the government of Sudan is responsible for "ethnic cleansing" and crimes against humanity in Darfur. The Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias it arms and supports have committed numerous attacks on the civilian populations of African ethnic groups, including the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa, and others. The government and its Janjaweed allies have killed thousands of civilians, committed systematic rape, looted livestock, and destroyed villages, food stocks, and other supplies essential to the civilian population.    On Saturday, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution threatening the Sudanese government with sanctions if it did not rein in the Janjaweed. But the new resolution failed to name the Sudanese government as responsible for the atrocities in Darfur, and did not call for enough African Union soldiers to protect Darfuri civilians. In light of the gravity of the human rights and international humanitarian law violations in Darfur, Human Rights Watch believes that the Security Council should impose an arms embargo on the Sudanese government and prevent it from selling oil abroad.    The video produced by Human Rights Watch and WITNESS includes scenes of burned and bombed villages and extensive interviews with the civilian victims of the crisis. "They came to the village on horses, in cars, and on camels. Some people started fleeing this way, other people went this way. Then, they started shooting and burnt the village immediately," said one resident of Darfur of the violence that he and his neighbors endured. "Later, when we came back, we saw dead bodies." Villagers interviewed for the video also describe attacks by "Janjaweed" militias operating in concert with Sudanese government forces, including an attack as recent as mid-July 2004.    Watch the Rights Alert to hear testimony from survivors and see evidence of the crimes taking place in Darfur and act now to end the atrocities in the region.    Link to Rights Alert at WITNESS:    http://www.witness.org/jsrightsalert.html?darfur+story1    Link to Human Rights Watch:    http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/06/24/darfur8954.htm    September 17th, 2004    "Why the World can't cope with African Crises", by Morton Abramowitz & Samantha Power.    Catastrophes such as Darfur require urgent action - and the UN can't act urgently, writes Morton Abramowitz and Samantha Power.    Every day editorial writers accuse the world or the United States of indifference to the suffering in Darfur. Television, after long averting its gaze, now rounds up desperate Darfurians to tell their stories. Organisations such as Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group have documented the horrors, exposed the lies and pushed the world to respond. Kofi Annan, Colin Powell, Jack Straw and other luminaries have visited Darfur to see for themselves and to urge the Sudanese Government to behave.    Meanwhile, in New York, the United Nations Security Council meets regularly to wrangle over whether sanctions should be applied or the G-word (genocide) used.    And what has all this strenuous activity achieved? It has helped persuade governments to feed the starving, but it has not improved the security of the people of Darfur. Indeed, the advocacy has stimulated government responses that have had the perverse effect of defusing the political pressure to stop the killings and return the refugees home.    When the flurry of interest was aroused four months ago, about 100,000 people were refugees in Chad and more than a million were displaced inside Darfur, unable to escape Sudan and confined to wretched camps. Today those numbers are thought to have increased to 200,000 and 1.5 million, respectively.    The estimate of 30,000 dead has risen to 50,000. Villages in Darfur are still being attacked by Sudanese planes and Janjaweed forces, and women in camps who fetch firewood are still assaulted daily.The uprooted are destined to remain wards of the international community.    Why has the world, with all its outpourings and Security Council deliberations, failed to tackle the Darfur problem? The main answer is straightforward enough: major and minor powers alike are committed only to stopping killing that harms their national interests. Why take political, financial and potential military risks when there is no strategic or domestic cost to remaining on the sidelines?    Major and minor powers alike are committed only to stopping killing that harms their national interests.But why is there no such cost? First, because not enough people are dying. The estimated 50,000 deaths are far fewer than the predictions, which ranged from 300,000 to 500,000.    Recent history has set the bar extremely high for concern in Africa. In Congo, where an estimated 3 million people have died over the past six years, the media have largely stayed home, and governments have gladly taken their cue of indifference. Although the previous civil war in Sudan took about 2 million lives, it was allowed to continue for almost 20 years. And in Rwanda of course, where about 800,000 were murdered, nothing was done.    Second, the delivery of humanitarian aid lets us off the hook. After an unpardonable delay, the world overcame Sudan's obstructionism to get food, medicine and plastic sheeting into Darfur. This has helped reduce the death toll, but it is a stopgap solution that keeps the media at bay and allows law-makers and policy makers to do good deeds while avoiding the political problem at the heart of Darfur's destruction: Khartoum's sins and, to a lesser degree, a rebel movement emboldened by the belief that the United States is on its side.    Now that we can all point to tens of millions of dollars in food aid, and can thankfully keep a million people alive indefinitely, the crisis has come to seem far less pressing.    Third, the existence of the UN Security Council hides the crux of the problem: countries do not want to do what is necessary to prevent large-scale loss of life in messy, complex Africa.    Crises such as Darfur require urgent action, and states are well aware that the Security Council cannot act urgently. It is not by accident that they throw the problem into the labyrinth of UN deliberations, which allows them to play the role of good international citizens, while the Security Council with its built-in vetoes from Russia and China and its built-in opposition from rotating members such as Pakistan and Algeria, prevents any serious action against sovereign nations.    The international system is broken, at least when it comes to Africa.    The Darfur death toll may as yet pale when compared with Rwanda's, but if 800,000 Darfurians were to be murdered next week, neither the states individually nor the Security Council as a whole would be prepared to muster a speedy and robust response. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a crisis in Africa - no matter how heavy the prospective death toll - that would generate the consensus needed not merely to feed civilians but to save them.    There is a moral and political void in the world when it comes to coping with catastrophes in Africa - a void that will not be filled by reforming the Security Council. The problem is the states that make up the council.    Darfur shows that dedicated advocacy can move democracies to denounce atrocities and provide generous humanitarian help. What the earnest advocacy rarely does is propel the powerful to stop the killing. For that to happen, righteous clamour must reach a high enough pitch that politicians in democratic states are persuaded to do a difficult thing: take domestic political risks in pursuit of policies that do not serve their immediate interests, that can be financially costly and that provide no clear-cut exit strategies.    (Morton Abramowitz is a former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Samantha Power, author of "A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, recently travelled to Darfur).
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