New UN rights body faces crucial test in Darfur
Dec 12, 2006 (GENEVA) — The United Nations’ new human rights watchdog faces a crucial test on Tuesday with European Union states and others demanding dispatch of an urgent mission to Sudan’s Darfur to probe widespread allegations of violations.
The Human Rights Council, launched last June in a plan to make the U.N. more effective, will be holding its first special session on the troubled western region of Africa’s largest state where aid officials say violence has killed over 200,000 people.
“If we do not get consensus (on action), there will be more questions about the credibility of the Council,” said one European diplomat who declined to be named.
The 47-state Council has held three special sessions on the Middle East during which it has strongly condemned alleged Israeli violations in Palestinian territory and Lebanon.
But so far it has only passed one mildly worded African-sponsored resolution on Darfur calling for an end to rights violations but without criticising Khartoum, which U.N. officials have accused of arming militia gangs responsible for some of the worst offences.
“We want to show that the Council can focus on other things besides the Middle East,” the diplomat added.
Khartoum says that the situation in Darfur, where simmering ethnic violence erupted into war in 2003, has improved since a peace treaty earlier this year with one of the leading rebel groups.
It disputes the death toll in the region, where more than 2 million have also been driven from their homes, and pins the blame for any continuing rights’ violations on rebel groups that have not joined the peace process.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour says atrocities are a “daily occurrence” in Darfur and those committing them enjoy virtual immunity.
An EU resolution expresses “grave concern at the seriousness of the human rights and humanitarian situation in Darfur” and urges that an expert team, headed by the Council’s special investigator for Sudan, be sent to the region to investigate.
The team would follow in the footsteps of a U.N. commission of inquiry in February 2005 which accused the Sudanese government and militia of “heinous” crimes in Darfur.
While accepting a mission, the African group on the Council wants it to be made up of diplomats from the Geneva-based body, who the Europeans say would lack the expertise to carry out an effective probe.
European officials said that the Council resolution was part of a diplomatic drive to get the Sudan government to accept U.N. reinforcements for badly stretched African Union troops who are trying to police the huge region the size of France.
(Reuters)