Annan asks how world can allow ‘horror’ in Sudan

Dec 8, 2006 (NEW YORK) — Outgoing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will ask on Friday how the international community can allow the “horror” in Sudan’s Darfur region to continue and say there is more than enough blame to shared all around.

In a speech to be given in New York, Annan says blame can be shared by those valuing abstract notions of sovereignty over human lives; those whose response of solidarity puts them on the sides of governments and not people; and those who fear commercial interests could be jeopardized.

“The truth is, none of these arguments amount even to excuses, let alone justifications, for the shameful passivity of most governments,” Annan says in the speech to be given to mark International Human Rights Day.

“We have still not summoned up the collective sense of urgency that this issue requires,” said Annan, who pledged earlier this week to make the killings in Darfur his priority until he leaves office on Dec. 31.

Some 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since the rebels took up arms against the central government in 2003, while another 2 million have been driven out of their homes.

Sudan wrote Annan a letter last week, accepting U.N. support for an African Union force of 7,000, which has not been able to stop the violence. But Sudan wants a voice in deciding how many troops can be on the ground, which is difficult to sell to the U.N. Security Council, which pays for operations.

Sudan has accused the West of exaggerating the violence in Darfur while its Arab allies have in general backed Khartoum.

“We must do better,” Annan says. “We must develop the responsibility to protect into a powerful international norm that is not only quoted but put into practice, whenever and wherever it is needed.”

“Above all we must not wait to take action until genocide is actually happening, by which time it is often too late to do anything effective about it.”

Annan, who will be succeeded by South Korean Ban Ki-Moon, questions whether he has succeeded during his decade in the job in making human rights the “third pillar” of the United Nations, on a par with development and peace and security.

He also says the world body must work to end impunity, build an anti-terrorism strategy that does not “merely pay lip service to human rights but is built on it” and work to make human rights a reality in each country.

(Reuters)