Ending Darfur’s torment

Leader, The Guardian

In spite of harrowing reports almost daily from Sudan, the response of the international community remains abysmally slow. The United Nations identified Darfur in May as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, but it was July before it passed a resolution and set a 30-day deadline. A divided UN security council yesterday began discussion about what to do next, but the early signs suggest a reluctance to pursue any decisive action. The UN has subcontracted responsibility to the African Union, the 53-member pan-continental organisation. In many ways this is commendable: an African solution to an African crisis. But the AU too has been lamentably slow. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday acknowledged some of these shortcomings when he made a speech on how to make the UN stronger. He asked the right questions about reforming the UN, but offered few answers.

The UN needs to respond faster and with more determination than it has shown so far in Darfur, where an estimated 600 are dying daily. After years of relative isolation and still subjected to US sanctions, the Sudanese government craves a complete return to the international community. It is susceptible to pressure and it would help if the security council was next week to threaten that failure of the Sudanese government to comply with UN demands would see the imposition of sanctions targeted against the leadership. The minimum the UN should be insisting on from the Sudanese government is to accept a significant increase in the AU force, from the 385 on the ground at present to more than 4,000, in a combination of soldiers and police. As the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, suggested on Wednesday when he delivered an assessment of the steps taken so far by the Sudanese government, the mandate of the AU should also be expanded from a purely monitoring role to patrolling. That could help restore some sense of security to the 1 million refugees who have fled to refugee camps within Darfur.

The Sudanese government, responsible for unleashing the militia behind the killings, needs to be given fixed dates by the UN for disarming these militias, and arresting and punishing their leaders. Some Western diplomats see Darfur as just the latest in a long line of African calamities, to be bracketed alongside famine in Ethiopia and civil war in Congo. Such attitudes are unacceptable. At the start of the 21st century, there should be no tolerance by the international community for the government-inspired killings and famine of Darfur.