Genocide Network Calls on US to support ICC in Darfur

Feb 28, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — The Genocide Intervention Network today commended the International Criminal Court for publicly releasing the first two names on its list of suspected war criminals involved in the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and called on the United States to fully support the ICC’s investigations in Darfur.

Ahmed Haroun, Sudan’s humanitarian affairs minister, and Ali Kushayb, a militia leader who participated in the execution of hundreds of civilians in 2003 and 2004, were accused by the ICC’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, of bearing “criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

The genocide in Sudan, in which the government has materially supported and encouraged local militias to target civilians, has claimed at least 400,000 lives and displaced more than two million people, according to the United Nations.

President George Bush and the Congress have both declared the situation in Darfur a genocide, and a large majority of Americans agree — 62 percent believe ending the crisis in Darfur should be a foreign policy priority for the United States, according to a poll conducted by the Genocide Intervention Network and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.
The survey, conducted in December 2006, also revealed that more than half of Americans (52 percent) think the United States should aid the International Criminal Court “by sharing intelligence about the genocide that would build its case against the government of Sudan’s leaders.” The ICC’s investigations in Darfur are ongoing.

“The United States has gone on record declaring Darfur to be a genocide, and the International Criminal Court’s prosecution of the perpetrators of these atrocities is a vital way to bring them to justice,” says Genocide Intervention Network Executive Director Mark Hanis. “But in order to end the culture of impunity in Darfur, the United States must recommit itself to fully supporting the current African Union peacekeepers with funding and logistics, and urgently press the international community to create an effective civilian protection force through the United Nations.”

In August 2006, the UN authorized a peacekeeping mission in Southern Sudan to be expanded to Darfur, but Khartoum refused to allow the peacekeepers to enter the region. Earlier this month, Sudan blocked a fact-finding mission by the UN Human Rights Council to Darfur that was to be led by Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams.

“The continuing efforts of the government of Sudan to delay and deny efforts by outside observers to enter Darfur — peacekeepers, journalists, humanitarian workers and even Nobel laureates — shows just how complicit the government is in the ongoing genocide,” Hanis says.

In 2005, a State Department spokesperson declared the United States’ interest in “an end to impunity in Sudan.” Yesterday, the State Department said it is “incumbent upon the government of Sudan, we believe, to cooperate with the ICC” but did not disclose whether the United States would aid the ICC investigation with its own intelligence.

“Accountability for the perpetrators of mass atrocities is the only path toward reconciliation and sustainable peace agreements with Darfurian rebels,” Hanis says. “The United States must support this effort to bring war criminals to justice, or risk emboldening militias who continue to slaughter and rape civilians with impunity.”

Contact:

Genocide Intervention Network

Ivan Boothe,
Director of Communications

e-mail: [email protected]
phone: 202.481.8220