Sudanese security forces in Darfur enjoy impunity – UN

May 5, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese government grants “broad immunity” to its security officers for rights violations in Darfur and minimizes the scale of the killings and rapes taking place there, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said Friday.

“In a statement issued at the end of a six-day visit to Sudan, Louise Arbour said that while government security forces maintain a high profile throughout Darfur, “there is no apparent minimum level of physical protection for the communities affected by the conflict. On the contrary, the pervasive presence of the national security apparatus inspires fear and apprehension among internally displaced persons and their host communities.”

Arbor said that in the 19 months since she first visited Darfur in late 2004, the situation in Sudan’s western region was “just as critical and in some respects worse.”

“There are continuing attacks on civilians, raids and pillaging of villages and rape and gender-based violence,” she said. During her stay, she said she had met women with babies born as a result of rape, and heard reports of children being recruited or abducted to serve as soldiers.

In an interview, Arbour said both men and women in the camps for displaced people in Darfur fear to venture outside to collect firewood, for instance.

“Women fear sexual violence … men fear being killed,” Arbour said.

Members of Darfur’s African ethnic groups rose in revolt in early 2003, provoking a counter-insurgency in which pro-government militia conducted widespread killings and destruction. More than 180,000 people have died in the conflict _ many of disease and hunger _ and another 2 million people have been displaced.

Long-running negotiations resulted in the signing of a peace accord by the government and one of the Darfur rebel factions in the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Friday night. The United States, Britain and the African Union pushed the parties this week to settle the dispute, but failed to persuade two other rebel factions to sign the accord.

In the interview, Arbour said the signing of the peace agreement would “open up space for improvement” in Darfur by encouraging donors to recommit themselves to the region and resume aid.

Arbour said the government’s security forces required fundamental overhaul.

“A crucial part of this reform is the abolition of the broad immunity granted to officers of the security apparatus,” she said in the statement.

She added that during her visit to Darfur, she heard reports of rebel violence against civilians and humanitarian workers.

“A particularly worrying development is the proliferation of armed groups (with no clear allegiances or political aims) engaged in criminal activity,” she said.

“Despite a number of measures taken by the authorities, notably the establishment of special courts and committees, impunity remains the norm in most cases of human rights violations in Darfur,” she added.

The government has acknowledged that rights abuses have occurred in Darfur but it has long denied that they are systematic. It has also denied supporting the pro-government militia, the Janjaweed, which is blamed for the bulk of abuses.

“In discussing the critical situation in Darfur with Sudanese local and national authorities I was struck, as I was during my first visit, by their efforts to minimize the gravity of the problem,” Arbour said.

She also spoke of the fall in humanitarian aid to the region, citing a shortfall in contributions from donors and an insecurity that impeded access to communities outside the major towns.

Arbour said in the interview that on her visit to southern Sudan this week, she found that more than a year after the signing of the January 2005 peace treaty which ended the civil war, armed groups and militia “continue to terrorize people.”

“Disarmament is a critical issue,” she said.

She visited an area 10 minutes’ drive from Juba, the capital of the south, where the people said the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group from northern Uganda, had recently killed 10 members of the community.

The civil war between southern rebels and the Khartoum government, which lasted more than 20 years, resulted in thousands of rifles coming into the region. Many of these weapons are now being used for acts of banditry.

(ST/AP)