Sudan plans to change strategy at UN Human Rights Council

May 30, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – Sudan’s Consultative Council of Human Rights (CCHR) is devising a new strategy to counter allegations of abuses against the country at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), an official revealed on Wednesday.

The new strategy was announced by the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Issam Al-Din Abdel-Gadir, following a meeting of the CCHR in the capital Khartoum. Abdel-Gadir said that the meeting had discussed Sudan’s latest speech at the UNHCR in Geneva.

He said that the meeting had concluded that future Sudan’s speeches before the UNHCR must focus on how to counter potential attacks from the international community against alleged violations of human rights in the country.

He further added that the new strategy would largely depend on audiovisual documentation of the human rights situation in the country as well as early preparations for UNHCR sessions.

The undersecretary pointed out that during the latest UNHCR session, Sudan had presented films about abduction of children in the country’s war-battered state of South Kordofan, adding that the move led for the first time to Sudan walking out without unanimous condemnation.

In September 2011, the UNHCR renewed for a period of one year the mandate of the independent expert on the situation of human rights in Sudan, Mohamed Chande Othman, despite lobbying by Khartoum to the contrary.

(ST)