WASHINGTON (ABP) — While stopping short of labeling the humanitarian crisis in the Sudan's Darfur region “genocide,” a long-awaited United Nations report lays blame on the Sudanese government for creating the crisis.
The report, released Jan. 31 by a five-member U.N. panel commissioned with studying the situation, also recommends those responsible for “crimes against humanity” in the situation be prosecuted by an international tribunal that President Bush opposes.
“The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by the government authorities … should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in the region,” the report said.
For almost two years, government-supported Arab militias in western Sudan have been driving members of black African tribes from their homes into refugee camps scattered across the region and in neighboring Chad. According to U.N. estimates, more than 1 million people remain displaced from their homes as a result, and at least 70,000 have died from violence at the hands of the militias as well as the disease and hunger resulting from being forced into refugee camps.
The report did not label the situation “genocide” — despite such descriptions previously employed by United States officials — because, in the commission's opinion, the actions of Sudan's central government did not exhibit clear genocidal intent.
“[T]he policy of attacking, killing and forcibly displacing members of some tribes does not evince a specific intent to annihilate, in whole or in part, a group distinguished on racial, ethnic, national or religious grounds,” the report said.
An expert on the subject told Associated Baptist Press that the legal standard for genocide with which the commissioners were forced to work “is very strict and very high.” Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, said, “What's key about what the report said is that, even if they did not conclude there was a genocidal policy on the part of the [Sudanese] government, that does not detract from the serious human-rights crimes … that they found the government committed.”
On Feb. 1, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the U.N. Security Council, of which the United States is a member, to move quickly on the report's recommendations to end further violence in Darfur. According to media reports, the Security Council may vote on the recommendations as early as Feb. 3. Among the report's recommendations is that the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court investigate and prosecute the case.
If that happens, it may set up a showdown with the Bush administration, which opposes the ICC. That body, supported by the majority of the rest of the world's governments, is designed to prosecute war crimes and other international atrocities.
But in 2002, Bush essentially withdrew U.S. support for the treaty that created the court. Since then, administration officials have said they fear the court could be abused for politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of U.S. soldiers and other citizens.
A few days before the U.N. Darfur report was issued, Bush officials recommended that an ad hoc African war-crimes tribunal, similar to the one created in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, be established to deal with the Darfur situation.
But Gagnon said that would take too long and allow atrocities to continue in the short term. “[The ICC] is already up and running,” she said. “In our view, it is the best option to provide quick, speedy justice and could act as a very good deterrent.”
Gagnon, who recently returned from a trip to Sudan to study the situation, said Sudanese government officials in Khartoum “became very worried” when the subject of the ICC was brought up. “That may cause them to stop what they're doing — an investigation by that court,” she said.
Gagnon added she hopes U.S. officials will simply abstain from the Security Council vote on the recommendation to have the ICC investigate the situation rather than use its veto power.
“The government's ideological opposition to this court should not get in the way of speedy justice for Darfurians,” she said. “That's what should be front and center — what's best for the people of Darfur, not what's best for the U.S.”