Darfur lawyers denounce government’s stance on UN rights mission
Darfur lawyers denounce government’s stance on UN rights mission
BBC Monitoring Service – United Kingdom
Published: Feb 26, 2007
Excerpt from report by Sudanese independent newspaper Al-Ayyam on 26 February
The Darfur Lawyers Association has sent a letter to the president of the UN Human Rights Council, Luis Alfonso de Alba, in Geneva, urging the council to strive to implement decision S-A/101 on human rights in the Darfur region. 72 lawyers signed the following letter:
We write to you with regards to decision S-4/101, adopted by the council on 13 December 2006, to express our whole hearted support for your efforts aimed at establishing human rights and stabilizing the humanitarian situation in Sudan as a whole and in Darfur in particular.
We hope greater efforts will be exerted and that you will follow the matter closely in order to achieve results. There is no doubt that these efforts will put an end to the dangerous human rights and basic freedoms violations against the weakened sectors in Darfur.
These efforts will further assist in putting forward war criminals to justice and ensure they do not evade punishment and make them accountable for their acts through the force of international law.
Your Excellency ambassador de Alba,
We have followed with interest the process of implementing the above decision and must here express our disappointment in the way the work of the higher committee for Darfur was curbed. In the same spirit of transparency, characteristic of our work in the field of human rights, we look forward to receiving a detailed report on discussions between your council and the government of Sudan which resulted in what has occurred. In particular we are interested in the reservations raised by the Sudanese government regarding the formation of the delegation and its work which resulted in the delegation being prevented from entering Sudan and consequently Darfur.
This step on the part of the government makes clear the government’s procrastination in living up to its declared duties to cooperate in implementing and abiding by decision S-4/101. [Passage omitted.]
We would therefore like to inform your esteemed council of the following;
1- We strongly condemn the Sudanese government’s lack of cooperation with UN bodies. We further strongly denounce and declare our objections against Sudan’s refusal to issues some members of the UN delegation with entry visas as stipulated in decision S-4/101.
2- We support the delegation in its efforts to find facts and study the situation of human rights even from outside Sudanese borders as a large number of victims are living in refugee camps in Chad.
3- We strongly support all efforts to implement sincere measures to improve human rights in Darfur and consider this a very urgent matter.
4- We call on the members of your esteemed council to urge other UN bodies, in particular the Security Council, to take punitive measures to stop attacks and blatant human rights violations against weakened civilians in Darfur. We further call on these bodies to make the perpetrators of these violations accountable for their acts, whatever their official positions.
Please accept our sincerest respect and appreciation.
The Darfur lawyers committee.