Darfur - Sudan : Action not words by The Guardian / Human Rights Watch 10:12am 11th Sep, 2004   September 11, 2004 (Leader:The Guardian)    America's declaration that genocide is taking place in Sudan has injected fresh urgency - and controversy - into the international debate about what the UN unhesitatingly calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis. It was only to be expected that the Khartoum government would reject the charge, but there has also been a lukewarm response elsewhere to Colin Powell's statement to the Senate foreign relations committee. The US secretary of state says genocide is taking place on the basis of evidence that black African villagers in Darfur are being targeted with the specific intent of destroying "a group in whole or part". Human rights organisations have welcomed the shift. Britain's official response is that grave crimes are being committed by the government-backed Janjaweed Arab militias and that the UN should mount an urgent investigation. Is this a case of diplomatic sensibilities masking a brutal truth? Is it right to have reservations about using the G word?    Situations previously characterised as genocide include the Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenians during the first world war and, less controversially, the Nazis' extermination of six million Jews in the second world war, when the term was coined from the Greek word genos (race or tribe) with the Latin word cide (to kill). It has been widely applied to Pol Pot's Cambodia of the 1970s and made bloody reappearances in Rwanda in 1994 and in the aftermath of the wars of the Yugoslavian succession. Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president, is facing a genocide charge at the Hague war crimes tribunal. Radislav Krstic, a Bosnian Serb general, was convicted of genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacre of 7,000 Muslim men and boys.    Sudanese officials will admit to nothing more than a humanitarian crisis created by ethnic strife and have contemptuously accused Mr Powell of seeking black votes in the forthcoming US presidential election. Khartoum also argues that the intervention will undermine delicate peace negotiations with Darfur rebel groups in Nigeria. Most of the facts, though, are indisputable: 50,000 people have died since February 2003 and over a million have been displaced. Aid workers yesterday reported a new mass influx of refugees into one camp in southern Darfur. Harrowing images have been on our TV screens for long enough to fuel demands for something that goes beyond agonised handwringing and ineffective quiet diplomacy    It is true that behind the debate in the US lies guilt about the shameful failure to act when the first reports of genocide emerged from Rwanda a decade ago. That is only natural. The genocide characterisation may also be intended to galvanise the international community - though targeted sanctions such as an assets freeze and a travel ban on senior Sudanese officials would be more effective than the oil embargo currently being proposed by Washington. That is opposed by China, an importer of Sudanese oil and a security council member, as well as by Pakistan and Algeria. And there is the familiar dilemma that such sanctions are a notoriously blunt instrument, as the Iraqi experience taught. But urgent though the crisis is, Washington and London are still not trying the sort of heavy-duty arm-twisting they tried when seeking a second UN resolution authorising war on Saddam.    Mr Powell's intervention puts the US a step ahead of the EU, which says it wants a UN investigation. But the real question is not about a dictionary definition of genocide. No one can claim that Sudan is not experiencing a terrible human tragedy. As Oxfam has been warning in appeals for help to save lives: time is short and people are dying. Recognising the scale of human suffering is a prerequisite to action. Words, however resonant, are not enough    September 10, 2004. Sudan: UN Must Impose Extended Arms Embargo.    Letter to UN Security Council. (Human Rights Watch)    Your Excellency,    You are currently discussing a new resolution on the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan. We hope that this resolution will contain decisive measures to stop the ongoing human rights and humanitarian law violations in Darfur. We urge you to put in place measures to increase the international monitoring presence in Darfur, impose an extended arms embargo, establish an accountability mechanism and address extremely serious concerns with the proposed “safe areas” to be guarded by Sudanese security forces.    The government of Sudan (GoS) has promised to disarm and neutralize the Janjaweed militia on at least four different occasions:    - Agreement on Humanitarian Ceasefire on the Conflict in Darfur, April 8, 2004    - Agreement Between the Government of Sudan, The Sudan Liberation Movement, and the Justice and Equality Movement, April 25, 2004    - Joint Communiqué between the Government of Sudan and the United Nations, July 3, 2004    - Darfur Plan of Action signed by the Government of Sudan and the U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General Jan Pronk, August 6, 2004    In addition, in op 6 of Resolution 1556, the Security Council demanded that the GoS “disarm the Janjaweed militias and apprehend and bring to justice Janjaweed leaders and their associates who have incited and carried out human rights and international humanitarian law violations and other atrocities.” The resolution also stated that further action should be considered in the event of non-compliance.    Despite these repeated pledges, the GoS has not only failed to disarm the militia but, as our ongoing field research in Darfur has shown, its forces actually share camps with them and continue to direct and support their    activities. These camps are used as bases for Janjaweed militia, and in some cases government troops, as locations for GoS helicopters, and to store equipment, weapons, and sometimes even looted property and livestock. Many of these bases are close to internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and are located in or around villages from which the Janjaweed and government forces forcibly displaced the original inhabitants. More ominous still, we understand that the Sudanese government has incorporated members of the Janjaweed militia and its leaders into the police and the Sudanese army, including into the militia, the Popular Defense Forces (PDF), which is under army jurisdiction.    Given the obvious non-compliance by the GoS with paragraphs 1 and 6 of Resolution 1556, Human Rights Watch believes that the Security Council must now make good on its threat contained in op 6 of this resolution and impose further measures, as detailed below.    Increased International Presence    Over the past several weeks, the African Union has made offers to increase its presence on the ground to up to several thousand personnel. The Secretary-General stressed the need for such an increased presence in his report to you on 30 August 2004 (S/2004/703), although he failed to provide details. It is our understanding that the U.N. Department of Peace Keeping Operations has been working on plans that would involve some 3,000 troops and up to 1,200 civilian police. All along, the GoS has been resisting suggestions of increased deployment. Yet, at the same time, the GoS has complained that it did not have enough resources and was unable to control the militia activity in Darfur.    • The Security Council should endorse the plans for a significant increase in the presence of African Union personnel on the ground and with a mandate to protect civilians under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. It is also critically important that the Council impress upon the GoS that its failure to provide security in Darfur and its refusal to accept international assistance increases the likelihood of individual members of the government being found criminally responsible for the attrocities committed.    Expanded Arms Embargo    • In view of the GoS’s active involvement with Janjaweed abuses, we believe that the arms embargo imposed in op 7 and 8 of Resolution 1556 should be extended to also cover the GoS. To ensure the implementation of these measures, we urge you to establish a Sanctions Committee, as is customary with all sanctions you impose, to monitor the implementation of this embargo.    Establishment of an International Commission of Inquiry    We are concerned that the Secretary-General’s report failed to attribute the responsibility for the attacks against civilians to the government and that it stopped short of characterizing the abuses as violations of international human rights and humanitarian law and as crimes against humanity, even though the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, several UN agencies as well as a number of NGOs have consistently documented them and labeled them as such.    • We strongly support the inclusion of a plan for establishing an international commission of inquiry in the current draft resolution. Such a commission should:    1. examine the evidence concerning allegations of crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and other serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law committed by all parties in Darfur from 2003 to the present, including the nature of the crimes, the identity of the perpetrators, and the role of authorities in the commission of crimes;    2. collect and preserve evidence of the crimes; and    3. make recommendations on appropriate action to bring those most responsible for the crimes investigated and lesser offenders to justice in a manner that is consistent with international due process standards.    The commission of inquiry should be composed of international experts with expertise in conducting investigations and gathering evidence, including forensic evidence, and should be asked to produce a public report establishing key facts, describing briefly how it has fulfilled its mandate and detailing its recommendations on accountability.    We are extremely concerned about the concept of “safe areas,” to be selected and secured by the government of Sudan and agreed upon jointly by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General Jan Pronk and the GoS. The Security Council should be wary of using “safe areas” as such, following the tragic lessons of Srebrenica and other “safe” zones in Bosnia. A proposal to create “safe areas” where security is to be provided by the very forces complicit in the forcible displacement of those contained there seems particularly ill conceived.    There is a serious risk that the government may confine civilian populations to zones around the major towns, which are then likely to become permanent resettlement sites. People relocated to them are therefore likely to be less able to return to their homes and access their lands, effectively consolidating a policy of forced displacement and “ethnic cleansing.”    The Sudanese government has a well-known record of creating displaced camps known as “peace villages” in other parts of Sudan. These have undermined civilian security, rather than ensuring it. In southern Sudan and in the Nuba Mountains, for instance, these camps were typically located several kilometers outside the main towns. Particularly in the Nuba Mountains, they developed a reputation for being areas where soldiers and militia could rape displaced women and girls with impunity. According to our information, the GoS has already started establishing “safe areas” in Darfur.    • We call on the Security Council to review the plan for the establishment of the “safe areas” and to ensure that, if they are to be established, they are not controlled by the Sudanese forces.    Finally, we would like to convey our utmost concern about the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) entered into between the GoS, the United Nations, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on 21 August 2004, in relation to the voluntary return of IDPs in Darfur. Our concerns relate to the lack of important fundamental legal standards in the MOU, the failure to include a provision for the independent monitoring of the treatment of IDPs after return, the absence of provisions in relation to enforcement and accountability, and the fact that IOM does not have the mandate, expertise, experience or capacity to carry out its obligations under this MOU.    • We urge the Security Council to ensure that the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Jan Pronk addresses these concerns, in consultation with members of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee.    We trust you will take the above comments into consideration as you work on the next resolution on Darfur. We stand ready to assist you and your staff with further information.    With kind regards,    Peter Takirambudde, Executive Director-Africa Division    Joanna Weschler, U.N. Advocacy Director
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